


never tasted as sweet a poison as you have

by AlysanneBlackwood



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Hotel, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: AU from the Westfield High massacre onward, Blood and Gore, Gen, Ghost Sex, M/M, Murder, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Shakespeare Quotations, Unhealthy Relationships, seriously, so much murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-07-13 11:13:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16016741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlysanneBlackwood/pseuds/AlysanneBlackwood
Summary: After the murder of his classmates, Tate Langdon runs.  He finds himself rescued by a strange, sad woman to the Hotel Cortez, whereupon he meets a Mr. James Patrick March.  They quickly bond, and from there, things can only get better.  (Well, better for the both of them.  For everyone else it is much, much worse.)(Currently on hiatus while I try to figure out the direction in which I want to take this.)





	1. sat him down beside his drink, oh my pretty darling

**Author's Note:**

> A couple days ago I wondered what would happen if all the characters played by Evan Peters on American Horror Story were put in the same room. I came to the conclusion that March would quite like Tate and want to teach him in the ways of being a proper murderer. And thus, I wrote this. Constructive criticism is appreciated in the comments. Trigger warning for mentions of school shootings, suicide, drug use, smoking, alcohol, and very dark themes in general. If this causes you pain in any way, please stop reading. Your mental health is far more important to me than how many hits this gets.
> 
> The title of this story comes from the song "Trust Me" from the musical film "The Devil's Carnival." The chapter title comes from the song "Unwed Henry" from a collection of albums known as "American Murder Song."

_Los Angeles, 1994_

He doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s going to do, only that he needs to just fucking _run._ Away from his mother, away from that house, and most importantly, away from that SWAT team, because they are going to take him down and for what, for ridding the world of some assholes who were going to grow up and ruin this shitty world even further?  That’s not a crime to be punished for. No. That’s doing them a fucking service. They should be grateful.

But they’re not.  So he’s peeling down an alleyway in the dark at top speed, dodging garbage bins and the occasional drug dealer, trying to lose the sirens blasting through the warm Los Angeles night.  They know it was him. They’ll probably shoot him on sight, and that’s no way to die. When Tate dies he’s going out on his own terms, whether he’s ninety-five on his deathbed or slitting his wrists in some gas-station bathroom tomorrow.  No one’s gonna take him out unless he fucking wants them to.

“Hey!” a woman’s voice calls as he rushes past.  “Where’re you going?”

“Get out of my way,” he snaps, pulling his hood tighter, but she catches up and grabs his arm.  “Let me go!”

“You’re running from someone, aren’t you?” she asks, tears running down her cheeks.  “Come inside.”

“Let me go!” he growls again, throwing her off.  She reaches out and yanks him to her, shaking her head sadly.

“No,” she says.  “You need a place to stay.  Come on.” She pulls him through a door before he can protest further, and down a hall of an… apartment building?  Hotel?  Fuck if Tate knows.

“I’ll scream,” he threatens.  “I’ll tell someone you kidnapped me.”

“You can’t do that,” she says, taking a drag on a cigarette.  “They’ll throw you away. I can tell. You did something bad and you don’t want to pay for it.  You never have to pay here. I think you’ll like it.”

“I didn’t do anything bad,” Tate says sullenly.  “I did everyone a favor.”

“Sure you did,” she replies.  “I’ve heard that one before. They were nothings, and all that.  Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re safe here.”

“Where _am_ I?”

“The Cortez.”  She smiles and leads him into an enormous, high-ceilinged lobby.

The Cortez.  That fancy place that’s been rundown for years.  Tate thinks he once heard his dad talk about how they should just knock it down.  And… holy shit, this place is beautiful, if you like whatever style this is.

“What the hell, Sally?” a tired-looking woman at the front desk demands.  “You can’t drag people in here unless they’re for him.”

“Look at him,” Sally says, leaning over the front desk with Tate behind her.  “Weren’t you watching the news just now?”

“I…”  The woman leans forward, blinking behind thick, face-eclipsing glasses.  “Oh, no.” She shakes her head vigorously. “Just because of _them_ doesn’t mean we can keep anyone!  They’re looking for him; what happens when they find out they can’t arrest you as some kind of accessory?  You know we can’t have the police in here.”

“Exactly,” says Sally.  “We can’t have the police in here.  You can’t call them. He’ll stay.”

 _“No._ You’re going to take him out the back door, and you are going to turn yourself in, or keep running until they catch you.  We still get guests. What if he shoots one of them?”

“I won’t,” Tate says.  “I haven’t got a gun.” It’s true, he doesn’t; it fell out of his bag and he didn’t bother to grab it, but he could still bash his own head in for opening his mouth right when he needs to keep it shut.  Silence is key right now; make this lady think he’s over the killing thing and he’s got a shot at survival.

“He’s safe to be around,” Sally insists.  “Honest too. And… take off that hood.”

“Why?”

“I wanna see your face clearly.  So does Iris. Come on. Take it off.”  Sally crooks a thin finger, beckoning to herself and the other woman, who must be Iris.

Tate groans to himself and removes his hood, trying not to glare at the women.  Iris blinks again and stumbles backwards; Sally’s eyes widen, filling up with more tears.

“My god,” Iris mutters, and collects herself.  “Here,” she says, practically shoving a key into Tate’s hands.  “Sixty-eight. Sally, look after him. Take the key and lock him in there if you need to.”

Tate grinds his teeth at the last one.  He’s so sick of being locked up. Locked in his room by his mother or because of her screaming at him, locked into the school building all day, and now, instead of being locked in prison, he’ll be locked in here.  Which might as well be a very pretty prison. He wants to say fuck it and run, but that means getting caught. _Whatever, maybe if I fuck her she won’t lock me in whenever she wants.  She looks lonely._

“I will,” Sally says, but as soon as they get in the elevator, she shakes her head.  “I’m not gonna lock you in there because Iris thinks you’re a threat. Whatever you are, you’re gonna cause _some_ trouble and God knows I need that.”  She sticks a hand in one of her coat pockets and comes up with a cigarette.  “Want this?”

Tate snatches it from her, digging a lighter out of his own pocket and lighting it.  The sweet burn of nicotine fills his mouth and lungs, and god, does it feel good. Sally lets out short, harsh cackle.

“A little young for that, aren’t you?” she asks.  

“I’m seventeen,” he snaps, feeling stupidly childish just for saying that.  

“Really?”  Sally leans in, intrigued.  “What was it? Stealing cigarettes from Mom and Dad’s dresser?  Buying them at the corner store, telling them you look young for your age?  Or sucking off the cashier in the back room?” Tate glares at her, and she smirks back, knowing she’s gotten to him.  “Let me guess. Secret double life? Just another moody brat at home, locking yourself in your room, until it’s dark and you’re shooting up and letting some forty-year-old fuck you in an alley--”

 _“SHUT UP!”_ Tate roars, grabbing Sally by her wrist and flinging her into the wall.  She falls to the floor, laughing, more tears running down her face, which only infuriates him further.  She should be scared of him. She should be terrified. Maybe he doesn’t have a gun, but he can sure as fuck beat her half to death if he tries hard enough.  She isn’t even trying to fight back, she’s just sitting there _laughing._ At him.  Tate wants to punch clean through a wall.  He commits mass fucking murder and _still_ someone thinks he’s some moody pretty boy not to be taken seriously.  A pretty boy who’s secretly a China white-addicted whore too, apparently.  (It was meth. And only twice, and he paid money for it.)

The elevator doors open, and Tate storms out, leaving Sally on the floor, smirking at him.  She thinks she sees right through him, doesn’t she? Everyone does. Every single fucking therapist they sent him to acted like they knew exactly who he was and what was ‘wrong’ and how he could fix it and he still shot that cheerleader bitch in the heart.  So no, _no one_ sees through his walls, and he likes it that way.  However much she wants to know him, she never can. At least he has that satisfaction over her.

The lock clicks smoothly, and he walks inside, shutting it after him.  It looks comfortable, and more than enough for one person, but he doesn’t want to stay in right now, even though he probably should.  Maybe it’s the meth still in his system or that fucking glorious high that came with avenging Beau; he needs to walk around this hotel and find someone, _anyone_ who won’t think he’s completely insane and give him another cigarette or a drink.

He’s heading back towards the elevator when he sees that one of the doors is open.  Sixty-four. Then he smells it: the sweet, acrid stench of cigarette smoke. _Thank god._ Without hesitating, he slips inside, and is greeted by the sight of a man’s back and one hand holding a long cigar, the other holding a glass of wine.  

“Hey,” he says.  “Do you have a--”

“Well now, what happened to hello?” the man says, rising and turning.  Tate almost bolts right then and there, because of all the things that have happened today, this is just flat-out mind-screwing.  The man has his face. His eyes, his eyebrows, his nose, his mouth--the only differences are that the man has a small mustache and his hair is combed back.  And the suit. What is he, some kind of very invested history buff?

“I suppose I would be shocked,” the man says, “had not Miss Evers been so attentive, bless her.  You’re the boy who shot those children, yes?” Tate stammers, at a loss for what to say. For all he knows, this guy could throw him out on the street to the cops’ mercy.  The man laughs. “Oh, don’t worry yourself. I’m not going to call the police. No, I’m delighted to find you here. You’re like me--such rare birds, you and I. I think we’ll be quite the kindred spirits.”

“I… _who are you?”_

“March is the name, dear boy.  James Patrick March. Longtime resident.  Now, you look in need of a smoke. Why don’t you stay for one?  It’s been so long since I’ve had a proper conversation.”

Tate’s about to say no and leave when he stops himself.  There’s something about this man, this March, that feels different.  Like how he sees right through Tate, but somehow Tate doesn’t mind and isn’t clamming up.  March feels familiar, feels _right._  He nods and sits, and March lights him a cigarette before sitting as well.

“Now,” he says.  “Why did you shoot those children?”

“They were useless,” Tate says.  “All they were gonna do is fuck the world up worse than it’s been.  I saved people. Every single person who would ever have to deal with their shit--I saved them a hell of a lot pain.”

“Indeed you did,” March says.  “And I must say, you made very good work of it.  Miss Evers showed me a picture of you as the death’s-head.  Are you a theatrical person, Mr. Langdon?”

“I don’t act.”

“I don’t mean the stage, dear boy, though as a wise man once said, all the world’s a stage.  When you killed those children, you didn’t simply walk in there and shoot them. You painted yourself to frighten them beforehand, am I correct?”  

Tate doesn’t quite recall why he painted a skull on his face at first (being high on meth will do that to you), but then he remembers what he thought.   _I’m bringing death.  I’ll be the fucking Grim Reaper himself._ “I was killing them,” he says, after a long drag.  “I was their death. I guess I thought I should be Death.”

“So are you _are_ theatrical,” March says, positively gleeful.  Then he sighs and shakes his head. “But so messy.  Don’t you know to be more careful of how and when you do it?  Were you under my tutelage, they never would have caught you so quickly.”

“I don’t know,” Tate snaps, feeling himself turn red.  “I’m sorry I’m not up to your standards.”

“I’m sorry to anger you,” March replies, “but I fear there is wasted potential here if you keep on as you have done.  You’re possessed of a once-in-a-generation rage, Tate; you must learn to cultivate it and harness it. I could you teach you to do so, and I believe you’d be much happier for it.  It is far easier to do as you please when you are a master of your craft, so much that no one ever forgets you. Now what say you?”

The response is natural as breathing, as the feeling of his finger on the trigger, as the snap of a lighter flaring to life in his hand.  “Yes.”

“Excellent!”  March stands and holds out a hand to shake.  Tate takes it. It’s a cold, precise hand, one that never twitches or shakes unless commanded to.  “Come here tomorrow at eleven o’clock. I have something to show you.”

“Thanks… Mr. March.”

“Please, call me James.”  March sits again. “Now if you would be so kind, please leave me be.  I’ve something I must attend to. And close the door on your way out,” he adds, as Tate walks out.

When he shuts the door, Sally is standing behind it, crying.  “I heard it,” she sobs. “Every word. Listen to me. Don’t go to him tomorrow.  You’re not right for that. You’re not right for _him;_ you feel too much.  He’ll kill you and you’ll just be another one of his victims.  I know you don’t want that. Look, I like you. I _saved_ you.  Do this for me?”  Her fingers clutch at his shoulder, and he shakes them off and shuts the door to his room before she can go after him.  She wants him all to herself; to be her pet just like Mom has hers. Well fuck that. He’s no one’s but his own. James understands that.

“You have to listen to me!” Sally cries, pounding on the door.  “He’ll ruin you!”

“Leave me the fuck alone!” Tate screams back.  He waits. More sobbing, then silence. What the hell does she know?  He’s found the first person who understands him since never. And god, does it feel good.  James is the first person he can breathe freely around. The first person who’ll listen to every dark thing he’s ever thought and not judge him.  A mentor. Maybe even a friend.

Jesus Christ.  For the first time in years, he’s actually looking forward to waking up tomorrow.


	2. i’m in the details with the devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Against repeated warnings, Tate agrees to help March with something he is quite determined to finish.
> 
> The chapter title is from "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light 'Em Up)" by Fall Out Boy.
> 
> Trigger warning for discussion of murder and gore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The discussion Tate and March have about religion is taken almost verbatim from the second episode of Hotel, when March talks about his father to the praying man. The discussion of addiction is taken from the same episode, during March's first conversation with Tristan Duffy. I just thought I'd cite them here, since a lot of this is going to be repurposing conversations from Hotel in different ways.

_ “He can’t stay here, James,” Elizabeth said.  “Not unless you stay away from him.” _

_ “And let you sink your claws into him, my dear?  You must be mad. He’s far too interesting to be another one of your pets.” _

_ “Do you think I’d love him?  He’s weak. He wouldn’t last a day in my bed.” _

_ “Oh, don’t play your silly games with me.  I know you like them to be weak. It makes it easier for you to turn them.  No, in fact, I intend to keep him from you. He’s to be mine and mine alone.  Do you understand?” James asked. He saw no problem here. He’d let her have her little follies for many, many years, no matter how much it pained him to see her with another.  She might be fair and let him have one of his own.  _

_ “What will you do with him?” she hissed.  “What are you gonna do to him, Jimmy? Make him your envoy, your hands to kill where you can’t go?  Your slave?” _

_ “My love, I’m disappointed in you,” James chastised, taking a sip of his wine.  “I never dreamed you were capable of such hypocrisy. I’m only doing with him what you’ve done with yours.  You should be proud. And,” he added, “should you ever turn him, I will cut your throat, and it will be you and I for all eternity, just as you fear and hate.” _

_ Elizabeth glared at him, rage sparking in her eyes.  Now she knew how he felt--she had who had deprived him of a full, satisfied life.  Well, let her live in misery for a little while. She would forget the boy eventually.  She always forgot them. _

_ “I’m going to bed,” Elizabeth said, her tone colder than ice.  “Don’t show yourself to me until the next month. You make me sick.” _

_ “As you wish,” James said cheerily, rising to get the door for her.  She let it fall closed before he could reach it. In spite of her coldness, he knew he had won.  She couldn’t stand the thought of being dead in this place, of being in here with him until the world ended; why, she hated him, and would do anything to pretend he didn’t exist.  She wouldn’t lay so much as a finger or speak a word to the boy. Of that, James was entirely certain.  _

_ Well, then.  Nothing left to do save for helping that poor child.  He needed it, more than anyone else. _

***

Sunlight shines in through the window, penetrating his eyelids.  He’s forgotten to close the curtains again.  _ God damn it.   _ He groans and cracks an eye open.  This isn’t his room. Where is he?

Running away.  Sally. The hotel.  James March. He remembers now, and he’s excited--actually  _ excited.   _ He wasn’t even excited to light the bastard on fire, just determined to do it.  Whatever he’s going to learn, it’s going to help the world. It’s going to rid people of pain.  All that blood he drowns in daily will ebb, and he’ll break through the surface and gasp out a first, free breath.  

He rolls over and looks at the clock.  Ten. He’s got an hour until James wants to meet with him.  When he rolls over again to sleep more, she’s sitting there, smoking and staring miserably at him.

“What the fuck?  Get out!” Tate yells.  “How’d you get in here?”

“I picked the lock,” Sally says.  “You’ve got to stay away from him!  That man will chew you up and spit you out like you’re nothing.  That’s what we all are to him. Nothing. He’ll use you, make you his slave; my god, don’t you fucking understand?  He’s dangerous, even to you!”

“You don’t get any of this.  Go away!”

“No,” Sally says, shaking her head, “it’s  _ you  _ who don’t get it.  He fucks you up until you don’t recognize yourself.  He turns your moral compass to shit. I saved you once, and I’m doing it again.  You should be grateful.”

“Just _ GO AWAY!”  _ Tate screams, and suddenly she’s gone, vanished.  He didn’t even hear the door close after her. However strange that is, at least she’s not here talking crazy anymore.  What the hell did James do to her? Probably nothing. She’s delusional; he’s seen the tracks on her arms, scarlet and purple and jabbed to the bone.  Junkies say all kinds of shit when they’re high, and from the look of her, she’s always high. 

God.  He needs a drink.  Tate’s not usually the drinking type--he’s always gone for nicotine--but Sally is enough for anyone to need alcohol in their system.  Throwing on his sweatshirt, he heads out of the room and down the elevator, to the bar he saw above the lobby. A bald woman is tending the bar, a bright blue scarf flung across her neck.  Her name tag reads LIZ TAYLOR.

“Get me a beer,” Tate says, sitting down.  Liz looks up and arches an eyebrow.

“How old are you?” she asks.  

“Twenty-one.  I look younger,” he says, cringing internally, because fuck, Sally’s right.  Here he is, lying about his age for a high. Fucking pathetic.

“No, you’re not,” says Liz, leaning over the bar.  “Really, how old are you? Sixteen?”

“Seventeen.”

“So I can’t give you a drink then,” she says.  “Sorry.” She narrows her eyes at him. “You’re that boy who came in yesterday.  The school shooter.” She shakes her head. “I’ve met a hell of a lot of crazies in my time, and oh, you are  _ not  _ the worst.  If you think you’ve done anything truly shocking, it’s nowhere near what I’ve seen and heard.”

“What have you seen and heard?  I like stories.”

Liz shrugs.  “Don’t you have to meet with Mr. March soon?  Whatever time he gave you, he prefers it when you’re early.  He’ll be expecting you.” Liz turns back to the bar. Well, he’s not getting a drink anytime soon.  Maybe James will give him another cigarette. He slides down from the bar and gets back in the elevator, taking it up to the sixth floor.  Walking past his own room, he knocks on sixty-four’s door. James opens the door almost immediately, smiling delightedly.

“You’re early!” he says.  “A man after my own heart--no one cares for punctuality these days.  Now, come with me. I believe you’ll appreciate this.” He claps a hand on Tate’s shoulder (something Tate would normally jerk away from, but somehow it’s not so awful with James) and steers him toward a wardrobe, which swings door-like away from the wall.  

“Is this your sex dungeon?” Tate asks.

“My what?”

“You know.  Where you keep all your whips and chains and shit.”

“Not in here,” James says as they walk into the darkness.  He flips a switch, and dim light floods the room. The brighter light is reserved for two jars on a shelf, eight others surrounding them.  One contains a human hand, the other strung-up rows of yellowed teeth.

“Jesus fuck,” Tate breathes.  “You did this?”

“I did,” James says, pleased with himself.  “Now read the signs.” Tate looks down at the labels marking each jar.  The jar with the hand reads  _ Thou Shalt Not Steal;  _ the other reads  _ Remember the Sabbath Day To Keep It Holy. _

“The Ten Commandments?”

“Exactly, dear boy.  They broke them, I’m afraid.  The first was the thief McGreggor; he was quite easy to dispatch.  The second were some poor foreigners looking for work on a Sunday. It’s truly sad when people forget their duties as good Christians, don’t you think?”

“I don’t believe that shit,” Tate says.  “If there was a God he wouldn’t make everyone live in so much pain.  He’d take everyone away to a better place.”

“I thought the same when I was a boy,” James says.  “My father believed--drank the wine and ate the cracker every Sunday.  And when we got home, if the poor cat so much as meowed, he killed it. Now, does the Bible not say to be kind to all creatures?  It was then I realized that the whole thing was a sham, so I might as well go out of my way to prove that no one truly adhered anyhow.”

“But… you never finished.  Why?”

“I was interrupted due to my wife turning me in.  As it is now, I made some rash promises and I can no longer finish this.  But you are free. You can do it.”

“Me?”  It comes out higher than he likes.  James said he was messy yesterday. What makes him think Tate can carry out eight murders according to the Ten Commandments?  He doesn’t even remember half of them. 

“Yes, you.  Who else? Why, you’re already a success; the whole country knows your name.  And as I told you, you shall not be caught. I’ll teach you to do it properly.”  James clears his throat. “You told me that you killed those children because they would ruin the world.  There are people out there already doing so. Come now. Wouldn’t you like to give some their proper comeuppance for all they’ve committed?”

“Yes.”  He says it even before he thinks it, so easily it scares him a little.  Fuck. He’s a psycho, isn’t he? A massive psycho who lives for ending people’s lives.  At least before, he wasn’t excited, just grimly determined to do what he thought he had to do to put people out of their misery.  Now he’s looking forward to it. It’s not just getting rid of the bad ones now. It’s fucking saving the world from drowning in all that blood and filth.

“How wonderful.”  James’s voice hisses along the back of Tate’s neck, causing a shiver to run through him.  “But we must ease into it, yes? I’ll be with you for the first one, so it must be in the hotel.  Any commandment left will do. I trust that you will find the appropriate victims.” He takes Tate by the hand and leads him from the secret room, setting the wardrobe against the wall.  “Would you like a cigarette?”

_ “Please,”  _ Tate groans, falling into a chair.  James laughs lightly, fishing a case from his pocket and lighting it before handing it over.

“Addicted, are you?  I tried to be. I tried everything--cigars, Bolivian marching powder, opium, even nitrous oxide.  None of it worked. I could only achieve that glorious feeling you call a high when I had bleeding flesh in my hands.  Did you feel that when you shot the children?”

“Yeah.  I felt it.  It was more like relief though, I guess.  Like I could breathe for the first time.”

“You felt constricted.  So do I, nowadays. It’s a shame, isn’t it?  There are so few who are truly enlightened on the subject of death.   They keep it all dammed up and refuse to acknowledge that deep in their hearts they want to tear life away.  You and I, we’re the smart ones. We know that it’s useless to hide what we desire, so we go out and grab life, like we were made to.”

“We’re made for killing.”  It’s not a question; James is right.  It was kill or be killed in the early days of humans, when everyone was stripped down to their basest instincts.  “We’ve always been.”

“Exactly!” James says.  “So there’s no need to be hypocrites and act as though we’re above such things when we know we’ve been put here for it.  It only causes us more pain, and you, you have been through enough pain already. I can see it in your eyes. No one’s ever listened to you, or bothered to truly care for you.  They’ve never understood that you’re no worse than they are--that you’re better, even. Now me, I understand all that, and though I’ve only known you a short time, I would like to be your friend.  I realize now that I never asked you yesterday. So, what say you? Friends?” He extends a hand.

“Friends.”  Tate sucks down smoke and takes James’s hand in his own.   It comes out before he thinks it again, and he realizes that he doesn’t have to think around James.  Doesn’t have to panic about what he’s saying and how it might freak people out. He can say what he wants, and James doesn’t mind; hell, he agrees.  What was it he said yesterday? Kindred spirits? Tate’s never believed in sentimental shit like that, but fuck, he’s never felt so right around anyone before.  Never felt like he could relax around anyone before, until James. So why shouldn’t they be friends?

“I’m sorry,” James says, “but I’ve pressing matters to attend to.  You understand, I hope?”

“Yeah.  You want me here tomorrow?”

“Not until you find our first sinners.  When you do, come to seventy-eight and tell me what you know of them, and what your plan is.  I will help you where you need it. Anyway, good day.”

As soon Tate shuts the door, there’s a woman on the other side of it.  But it’s not Sally. She’s dressed like a Golden Age movie star, and wears these strange gloves--they have sharp, false nails on the end.

“You shouldn’t be near him,” she says.  “He’s a terrible man.”

“He’s not,” Tate hisses.  “He’s the only person who’s ever gotten me.  Do you know how that feels? To have everyone refusing to just fucking  _ get  _ you, until someone comes along and gets everything right away?  I’m not staying away from him.”

“Sally’s right,” she says, placing a hand on his cheek.  “You feel too much for him. You lash out when you’re angry.  He doesn’t like it when people lash out, not in a way that isn’t his anyway.  He’ll leave you to the crows, and you’ll only be in more pain then you already are.  Listen! I know him better than anyone else here, and I’m telling you, he’ll use you up and leave you at the world’s mercy.  You might as well be in prison for your crimes for all he truly cares.”

Tate steps away from her hand.  “Why are you doing this?” he asks.  “You and her--what do you want with me?”

The woman’s eyes gleam.  “For you to be safe,” she says.  “That’s supposed to be a guarantee here.”

“I’m safe.  I’m safe around  _ him.   _ I don’t have to keep my mouth shut about what I think when I’m with him.”

The woman shakes her head.  “You aren’t,” she says, but she leaves him, gliding down the hall.  Tate walks back to his room.  _ Thank-fucking-god.   _ No one’s in here.  He collapses out on his bed, turning on his side.  He’s so tired of it all, of people trying to hold him back.  Even here they are; James is the only one who’s letting him run free, who’s recognizing that whatever’s screwy about him, it’s not wrong.  The least he can do is repay him by finding the first victims as soon as he can.

Tate gets up and grabs his keys on the way out.  He needs to look at the guestbook.


	3. scarlet billows start to spread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After decades, the third of the Ten Commandments murders comes to pass.
> 
> The chapter title is from "Mack the Knife" by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, from their show "Die Dreigroschenoper", or "The Threepenny Opera."
> 
> Trigger warning for gore, murder, and grooming of a dark nature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first chapter, I wrote that March is particularly interested in Tate because he considers him theatrical due to the skull makeup Tate wore during the shooting. I've been rewatching Murder House and doing some research on AHS Wiki, and it turns out I'm wrong. The makeup is only in Tate's fantasies; he doesn't actually wear it. So, tiny change to the AU: in this version of the story he actually does wear the skull makeup instead of merely fantasizing about it. Also, for some reason, I gave Tate hangups about women's sexuality Dr. Arden-style. That just came out of the writing; I don't think he has those in canon.

“You can’t take that,” Iris says when Tate snatches the guestbook from the desk.  

“Mr. March wants me to look at it,” he replies.  Iris groans and lets him take it. Tate smirks to himself.  James must be in good with someone around here that no one’s stopping him.  It feels good to do this in the open instead of keeping it a secret; freeing, really.  He sits down in one of the armchairs and opens the book.

The date on the first page is 2 October 1980.  Fourteen years? Who the hell keeps this place up?  He starts flipping through, catching names as they go by.   _ Julia Walker… Thomas Bertrand… Angus Jefferson… Felicity Gallant…  _ He reaches the last page before a name stops him.   _ Lottie Johnson.   _ He’s seen that handwriting before.  Where? Only for a second, but he remembers.

Right.  Larry wouldn’t shut the fuck up that morning.  Reading the paper aloud, something about a runaway girl, while his mother shook her head and sighed platitudes.  Tate had been so irritated that he’d walked over and grabbed the paper from him, casually lighting a match and setting it on fire.

“Tate!” his mother had scolded.  “Apologize to Larry  _ right now.” _  When he wouldn’t, she’d slapped him so hard it sent him tumbling.  He’d gotten back up, spat a few curses at them, and stormed out the door before she could hit him again.  But right before it began to burn, he’d caught a glimpse of what was in the paper. The girl’s parents had put a handwriting sample in their letter to the city, asking if any hotels had seen writing like it.

“Hey,” Tate asks Iris, walking up to the front desk, “do you have the  _ Times?”   _

“Over there,” Iris says, indicating a table carrying a neat stack of papers.  “Knock yourself out.” Tate rifles through them, looking for one dated Monday two weeks ago.  Flipping through it, he finds the letter. The handwriting sample is the girl’s name:  _ Jenny McKee.   _ The idiot.  She didn’t even leave out the letters of her real name.  He looks at the alias in the guestbook again. Forty-four.  He’s got a visit to make.

When he knocks on the door, a bony, brown-haired girl about his age answers, her eyes narrowed.  “I don’t remember you,” she says. “You’re not one of the guys I met at the bar last night, are you?”

“No.  I’m sorry to bother you, but the phone in my room isn’t working, and I need to make a call.  Can I use yours?”

Jenny looks him up and down and shrugs.  “Sure. Why not?” She opens the door and allows him in, and Tate looks around the room for something he can use.  There’s a white-stained credit card lying on the table beside the bed. So. She’s a coke addict. Maybe a whore, by the look of clothes strewn everywhere and messy bedding.  Just another filthy slut, dragging this godforsaken city down with her. And a sinner too, since she’s run away. One of the commandments Tate remembers:  _ Honor thy mother and thy father.   _ Little bitch isn’t too grateful, is she?  Stealing her parents’ cards and taking off to an expensive hotel to bankrupt them.  All he needs is to think of a plan, and then tell James. If he’s a fast thinker, they can get it done tonight.

He turns back to Jenny.  “You know what? I’ll just talk to the clerk about this.  Thanks for letting me in.”

“Whatever,” Jenny says.  She grins. “You’re cute.  Can I take you out? To the bar downstairs or something?”

“I have a girlfriend,” Tate lies, and walks out of the room.  Yeah. She’s good to fucking go.

***

“I know what I’m gonna do,” Tate says as soon as James lets him into seventy-eight.  “There’s a girl in forty-four. She’s first.”

“Delightful,” James says, sitting down.  “Tell me. I do love a good story.”

“Her name’s Jenny McKee,” says Tate, sitting down across from James.  “She’s here under the name Lottie Johnson. She ran away from home in Silver Lake three weeks ago.  Her parents printed this in the paper a week after she disappeared. It’s a letter explaining the whole thing and asking people to come forward if they see her.  There’s her handwriting in there; that’s how I found her. Stupid bitch didn’t even try to write with her left hand when she signed in. I went by her room; took a look around.  She’s a coke addict--cocaine,” he clarifies, when James looks confused. “The letter says she took money, probably to keep up her habit. I know she did, I saw a card in there. Now tell me, does that sound like a girl who honors her mother and father?”

A slow smile spreads across James’s face.  “No,” he says. “She sounds like a nightmarish child indeed.  Well? What’s your plan?”

“She liked me,” Tate says.  “Said she wanted to meet me.  I’m gonna stop by again, tell her I want to meet her at seven-thirty.  Get high or some shit. She’ll agree, and I’ll get her alone. Then all I gotta do cut her throat with this.”  He digs the knife out of his pocket. It’s a normal kitchen knife, something he snatched for self-defense on his way out of the house, but it’s still sharp enough to tear clean through skin.  “You can come in once I’ve got her busy.”

“It’s wonderful,” says James after a moment’s thought, “but I must ask.  Would you like to sleep with her? Because if so, I advise you to kill her in the act.  She’ll be far too distracted then to ever notice.”

“I don’t,” Tate says bluntly.  “You can, if you want.” James shakes his head.

“No, this must be all your doing.  I will be there only to watch. Well, do as you have told me.  You’re a clever one, you can handle it. Now you must go to your girl, mustn’t you?  I’m sure she’ll be delighted to know you’ve changed your mind about her.”

“Seven-thirty,” Tate reminds him, and James smiles again as he gets the door.

***

“You again,” Jenny says when she opens the door.  “What? You find out your girlfriend cheated on you and now you wanna fuck me for revenge?  I’m not here to be your rebound.”

“No.  About that… that was a lie.  I don’t have a girlfriend. I was nervous, ‘cause I saw this.”  Tate walks in and shows her the card on her bedside table. “This white stuff… it’s coke?”

Jenny’s eyes dart around the room.  “Why do you need to know? You gonna bust me?”

“You have any to sell?” Tate asks, and Jenny blinks, taken aback before shaking her head.  “Please, I haven’t had any in four days. I feel like I’m dying. Just a little?”

“No,” Jenny says flatly.  “I don’t sell. It was already hard enough to get.”

“What if I go out with you?  You said you wanted that. I’ll get you a few drinks, we can come back here, snort some, I don’t know.  My parents are gonna lock me up when they find me; I wanna live before I rot away.”

“You ran away when they found your stash?” Jenny asks.  She sighs. “Man, I know the feeling. My mom would have strangled me if my dad hadn’t stopped her.  That’s when I left. I don’t put up with that kind of shit. I gotta be on my own, doing what I want, or else I suffocate.  You know?”

“Yeah,” Tate says, and he’s not lying.  Coke whore she may be, but she’s got a point about suffocating.  Still, she’s the one who’s contributing to the fucking up of the world by paying dealers for that shit.  The faint flicker of sympathy within him disappears, and he hates her again. Her and every single other bitch like her--the addicts who pay the pushers, allowing them to rise in the world when they should be crushed under every decent person’s feet.  The girls who ruin good marriages by whoring themselves to assholes who deserve castration. Girls who destroy countless people’s lives. 

He wants to grab her and strangle her right now; watch the light fade from her eyes.  But that’s messy. That’s what gets you caught, and he’s supposed to be learning how not to get caught.  The last thing to do right now is make a scene. So he smiles at Jenny. “C’mon. I don’t need a lot to get high, and I’ll be out of here right after, if you want.”

“Why the hell not?” Jenny replies.  “I could use a drink. You’re buying, you said?”

“Yeah.  Seven, downstairs?”

“Sure, see you then.”  Jenny smiles, and Tate walks out.

Shit.  Liz knows he’s underage.  How the fuck is he gonna buy her a drink?  What’s he supposed to do, disguise himself?  Tate stops and thumps his head into the wall once, twice, three times.  Idiot. Idiot. Stupid fucking idiot. How do you overlook something like that?  Fucking how?

His skull throbbing, he walks down the hall.  He’s got an hour and a half to figure out how he’s gonna get her a drink.  That should be enough time to think of something. 

Then he knows, and wants to bang his head against the wall again for not thinking of it earlier.  He’s got cash. He gives it to her, she gets whatever. She gets drunk. They go back to her room.  He cuts her throat by seven-thirty, when James is there. This shouldn’t be hard. Not harder than taking out fifteen kids with a gun in a school building, anyhow.

***

“Hey,” Tate says to Jenny, finding her at the bar.  “Take this.” He holds out the money to her, which she takes confusedly.  Then she smirks.

“You’re not eighteen, are you?  You can’t actually buy a drink.”

“Yeah, so?  It’s still my money.”

“Whatever,” Jenny says, and walks over to Liz, coming back with two glasses of whiskey a moment later.  “Drink up.” The liquor burns, far stronger than cigarettes, and Tate almost throws it back up. He forces himself to swallow it instead.  

“You like?” Jenny asks.  “I like mine strong.”

“Yeah.  I don’t want anymore, though.  My dad drank. It ruined him.” One more glass and his coordination will probably go to shit.  He needs to stay sharp, because honestly, he’s nervous. What if he does something wrong, and disappoints James?  Or worse, what if she escapes and tells? He’ll be on the run again, and he doubts he’ll find anyone like James again, someone who gets him so completely.  He can’t go back. He can’t go back to being so fucking lonely again. He won’t go back. Tate grits his teeth, half-hearing Jenny ramble on about something.  He can do this. He  _ will  _ do this, and the right way too.

Jenny’s good and drunk about four drinks in at seven-twenty-four, and that’s when Tate decides to make his move.  He leans into her, whispering in her ear. “Your room?”

“I told you I’m not gonna fuck you,” Jenny slurs, trying to push him away with a weak arm.

“Not that.  The coke. Remember?  You said you’d give me some if I bought you a drink, and I did.  Come on.”

“Oh.  Okay.”  Jenny blinks, and stumbles towards the elevator.  Tate catches her, slinging her arm around his shoulder, and they sway into the elevator.  Jenny giggles into his neck the whole way up, and he almost throws her off of him before remembering to keep his cool.   _ This is the way to do it, so you better get used to keeping your mouth shut instead of screaming in rage, idiot,  _ he thinks as Jenny fumbles with the keys and lurches into her room.  He follows, and looks at the clock. Seven-twenty-nine. Almost time.  Tate feels in his pocket for the knife. She didn’t feel it, or at least didn’t say anything.  She’s probably too drunk to feel or see much of anything. Good.

Seven-thirty.  Jenny turns back to him from the bed.  “Here,” she says, waving a bag full of white powder.  “Come here. You said you wanted it.” Holding the knife behind his back, Tate climbs onto the bed and grabs her by the waist.  Jenny shrieks and giggles when he pulls her to him, and Tate brushes her hair away from her face before pressing the knife to her throat.

The laugh dies away on Jenny’s lips as Tate notices something out of the corner of his eye.  He looks over. James is standing there, his eyes shining in the dim light. He doesn’t say anything, only nods, and Tate presses the knife harder, forcing it to cut skin.  Jenny wails.

“Help me,” she cries to James.  “You’re seeing this. Make him stop!”

“I’m afraid I can’t, my dear,” James says.  “He must do this alone. Well? Have you anything to say, Mr. Langdon?”

Tate closes his eyes and exhales.  He can let go. He can finally fucking let go.  “Coke whore,” he sneers, the words tumbling out of him.  “I read that letter. Your parents, they’re good people, aren’t they?  Gave you everything you could ever you want. And you repaid them by running away and practically bankrupting them.  They’d be glad if you turned up dead. Wouldn’t have to worry about having such a fucking ungrateful bitch for a daughter then.  You know, your parents deserve some happiness. I’m gonna give it to them.” Jenny screams, and Tate claps his free hand over her mouth.   Bracing himself, he digs the knife’s point further into her, and pushes it in deep before drawing it across her neck in what he hopes is a clean arc.  Blood gushes thick through his fingers, and he lets Jenny go, watching her fall back on the bed before walking around and standing over her, watching her choke and bleed out.  

This isn’t enough.  She’s still writhing around.  Tightening his fingers around the handle, Tate raises the knife and stabs her in the neck, barely grimacing as the blood spatters over his hands and face, because goddamn, this feels good.  It feels  _ right.   _ Just like squeezing the trigger did.  He feels freer, somehow. Cleaner. Relieved of an invisible weight.  The weight of pressure, he realizes. The pressure to right the world is lighter, because he’s doing it.  He’s righting it, and he feels so light he might just take off and fly.

Jenny stops moving, and lets out a tiny choking sound before dying, her eyes and mouth wide open.  Tate pulls the knife from her neck and sticks it in his pocket, not caring if it’s covered in blood.  He’d rather have it bloody than clean anyway. A bloody knife reminds him that he’s finally doing some good with his sorry life; that life on this fucking filthy earth is worth it.  

He turns back to James, whose eyes are stretched wide.  James’s lips move soundlessly, and he pulls Tate to him, gripping his forearms.

“My god,” James breathes.  “My  _ god!   _ You’re a revelation, a perfect revelation.  I couldn’t have done this better myself. Why, I don’t need to teach you at all.  You’re a master, and so young! I can hardly believe my luck.”

Tate stands stiff in James’s arms, barely comprehending every word.  He thought he’d done it right, but  _ perfect revelation?   _ No one’s ever talked about him like this before, and he doesn’t know how to react, other than turning scarlet.  James notices, and laughs.

“I’ve embarrassed you, haven’t I?  I suppose you’re not used to such compliments.  They never do, to the likes of us. They see us as strange.  The only reason anyone ever flattered me was for my money. But remember: we are not strange.  We are not wrong. We are the ones who understand the people’s true needs. And if you keep on as you started, they will thank us one day.  So do as you wish. Only adhere to the commandments, but find who you will where you will. Only tell me of them afterwards, and bring me something of them.  Speaking of which, please cut out her heart. I would have it for the room I showed you.”

“This’ll work?” Tate asks, showing him the knife.  James studies it before nodding an affirmation. Tate goes back to the body, trying to figure out how to cut out a heart.  

“Oh, damn,” James says.  “I haven’t told you. Start at the stomach and and go through the lungs.  Then reach in and take it.” He says it so casually that Tate knows he’s done it before, and a thrill runs through him.  He makes the incision as James says, moving the knife upwards from the stomach until he has a cut long and wide enough to reach into.

Before he can think too hard, Tate rolls up his sleeve and plunges his arm inside, his fingers searching blindly until he grips thick muscle.  Clenching his jaw, he tugs, ignoring the twist of nausea in his stomach. Spilling blood is one thing, actually touching organs is another. He’s never liked to get this messy, but James has done so much for him, and the least he can do is this.  

The heart comes free and Tate extracts his arm, dripping with crimson blood and gore.  Thank whatever’s out there, it’s not beating, only lying still and bloody. He hands it over to James, who examines it closely.

“It’s a wicked heart she had,” he says, “therefore it is perfect.  Wash yourself and come.”

“Don’t we have to clean up?”  The corpse’s blood is still running over the ends of the bed, creating dark puddles on the floor.

“Only the body, and that is easily cared for.  The rest will be Miss Evers’s doing. Ah, yes. Miss Evers!” James calls, and a maid comes in, too cheery for a woman who’s about to clean up a murder scene.  “You are able to clean this, I presume?”

“Of course, sir,” Miss Evers says, to Tate’s confusion as he heads into the bathroom to wash his hands and arm.  “I’ll be about it right away.” She sets to rolling the body in a sheet, which James takes in his arms and walks out of the room.  Tate follows, a million questions running through his head. Namely,  _ why the fuck isn’t that woman screaming bloody murder? _

“Dear me, I never introduced you two.  That was Miss Evers. She’s been employed here for a very long time now.  Don’t worry, she shan’t say a word--she’s a good, loyal woman. She loves me, so I daresay she’ll love you.  And she’s quite adept at getting out the stains, so there’s never a problem of that sort.” James continues down the hall with the body in his arms and goes through a door to the staircase; down, down, down they go, until Tate is pretty sure that they must be far underground.  After what feels like about ten miles of stairs they enter a basement with a door in the wall. James drops the body in Tate’s arms, and he almost staggers. She’s heavy, for a junkie. James opens the door and Tate peers down, seeing a long, dark chute. 

“Where does this go?” he asks.  “The furnace?”

“It goes very far,” James answers.  “Too far for anyone to find. Now put her in, and let her fall.”  Tate hefts the corpse and shoves her in head-first, grunting as he gives her another push so she’ll fall.  Jenny disappears into the black, the soft hiss of skin on steel fading away as she falls further. Tate listens for the thump of body on ground, but nothing comes.  Where does it go, the goddamn center of the earth?

And suddenly James is holding him again, his face absolutely ecstatic.  “You’ve done it,” he says. “You’ve done it all now. The murder, the disposal.  You’ve kept your head through it all. You enjoyed it, haven’t you?” Tate nods. “I was right about you.  You’re just like me, more than anyone else ever was.” James leans down, until they’re close enough to kiss.  “Do whatever you want from here. I trust you completely.” His breath smells of liquor, but not in the reeking, ugly way it did with his mother.  This is kinder, less unhinged. There’s no promise of screams and tears. James doesn’t lose himself when he drinks. He’s in control, in power at all times.  Tate thinks he got some of that when he had them at his mercy in school, and when he shoved a knife in Jenny’s neck. He wants that power again, all the time, because when he has that, the world isn’t growing smaller and crushing him.  It’s expanding, letting him stretch and grow. Letting him fly. Letting him  _ be. _

“Come now,” James says.  “There’s still the heart to take care of.”  They go back up the endless flights of stairs to the elevator, and arrive at sixty-four.  James pulls the wardrobe away from the wall and they go into the display room. James lifts the jar marked  _ Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father,  _ mounts the heart on a pole, and replaces the jar, stepping back to admire Tate’s handiwork.

“And now we have begun,” he says.  “I trust that you will not take long to carry the rest out?  It has taken so long for even three to completed; I would rather not wait again.”

“I won’t,” Tate says.  “I promise.”

“Good.”  James grips Tate’s hand before leaving him alone in the room.  Tate walks out to find James gone, and as he heads out to the hall, he already knows what’s next.

Adulterous couples are a dime a fucking dozen in this city. This will be almost too easy.


	4. what a nice surprise; bring your alibis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two more murders pass, and they are now halfway done.
> 
> The chapter title is from "Hotel California" by the Eagles.
> 
> Trigger warning for mentions of self-harm, murder by gun, and murder by knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this being a bit long and probably repetitive. I'm doing two murders to a chapter now, and I'm not the greatest at writing about it. By the way, there's a reference to another one of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's shows in here. Tell me if you catch it; I had a lot of fun putting it in there!

“Hold still,” Sally snaps.  “Do you want the cops to catch you?”

“No,” Tate mutters, forcing himself to stop moving.  He has to go out to kill his victims, and he’s jittery as fuck.  Thank god Sally agreed to make him look older and lend him some clothes she picked off past residents, but that doesn’t account for his height or his hair.  Any lone cop could recognize him if they got close, and if he runs, then they’ll know it’s him. He’s just going to have to do this the hard way: acting natural out on the sidewalk when every instinct is screaming to take the alleys.  And he’ll have to tune it all out--the junkies, the whores, the corrupt executives with their pagers, the homeless drunks asking for cash; every little disgusting part of this fucking sewer they call a city. He’s never been able to turn off that radar in his head which shrieks incessantly if he so much as sets a foot outside.  The radar that makes him want to grab someone and choke them with his bare hands or put a bullet through their skull. His hands curl into fists just thinking about it.

“You’re too tense,” Sally says.  “Loosen up.”

“I’m tense, I’m moving too much; which one is it?  Fuck you.”

“Yeah, fuck you too, little psycho.”

“You wish,” Tate says.  He doesn’t quite understand why, but Sally’s stopped bitching about James, and even offered the help he needs.  He wonders if it was James who put her up to it; he has some kind of power around here. Everyone knows him, and everyone lets Tate do whatever he needs, even if it’s against the rules, because James okayed it.  Tate admires that kind of cool. James doesn’t let the dark thoughts get to him; he doesn’t let them build up until he has to let them out by way of razorblade. He gets rid of them by acting on them, and as Tate’s learned from last time, that’s what brings the flying feeling he’s come to crave.  

But to act on them, he has to not get caught first.  And Sally’s still not done helping with that. “How long is this gonna take?”

“Long time, if you keep creeping me out with that stare.  Stop looking into my soul.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?  You said not to blink!”

“Five minutes ago,” Sally smirks, knowing she’s getting to him.  Tate grits his teeth, but keeps his mouth shut. He needs to save it.  Save it for those miserable cheaters he heard earlier this week. Once he finds them, he can release the rage that pulsates in his veins, that tears his throat raw with unmade screams.  And he’ll feel good again. Light. Empty of pain, empty of anger, better than a high. Absolutely fucking euphoric.

“Done,” says Sally.  “You look at least forty.”  Tate goes into the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror.  This isn’t too bad; he does look much older, with all those lines she drew in.  If he keeps his hood up people shouldn’t recognize him. Or will keeping his hood up make him look suspicious?  He wants to ask James about it, but he already proved he could do so much without help; he can’t go back now. 

When he walks back out, Sally’s still there, gathering her brushes together and throwing them back in her coat.  Tate grabs his bag and starts gathering what he needs: the knife he used to kill Jenny, a small handgun he stole from room twenty-six, and a pair of sharp scissors, which he figures might be better for cutting open bodies than a knife.  Slinging it over his shoulder, he pulls up his hood and heads out, forcing himself to breathe normally. This is all going to go fine. No one’s even looking for him here. They all think he fled the state; it was in the papers two days ago.  

Exhaling through a clenched jaw, he walks out the front door, into the beating sunshine.  Well, fuck. Who wears a hood in eighty-five degree weather? Or a sweatshirt? He drops his hood; there are a million people with hair like his anyway.  They won’t know him by his hair. Taking another deep breath, he starts walking, slower than the expected pace.  _ You’re safe.  You don’t have a care in the world.  You’re cool. WALK LIKE IT.  _ A cop car rolls by and stops at an intersection.  Tate’s heart starts throwing itself against his ribcage and he wants nothing more than disappear behind a building because oh shit, they’re going to know it’s him.   _ Just.  Fucking.  WALK. They won’t know if you keep walking.   _ So he goes on, and the car turns left while he goes straight.

Tate looks around as he walks, looking for the Arden Hotel.  He’s pretty sure it’s nearby, as it’s on the same street as the Cortez, and he knows who to find.  He heard them while stalking the halls for anyone he could find, hoping to get as much done inside so he wouldn’t have to go out.  He got lucky, stopping outside twenty-two when he heard a woman talking loud enough to go through the door.

_ “I can’t, Stan.  Okay? I can’t leave him.  You know he controls it all our money; I don’t have a fucking dollar to call my own.”   _ Tate had looked into the room through the crack between the door and the doorframe, and had made out a dark-haired woman and man arguing.

_ “I told you, I’d take care of you--” _

_ “And Beverly will kill you if you try to leave.  Baby, you have stop talking like this. We can’t run away together; what about Ben?  Or Eddie? Are you just going to leave your sons with no explanation?”  _

_ “No!  I’ll tell them I’m going on a business trip, that’s not out of the ordinary.  Come on, Kat, don’t you even want to try? We can catch a flight to Boston, live out in Concord like you always wanted.  Please. Let’s just try. I know you have work trips too. Send a note back after we get settled.” _

_ “And how long will that take, Stan?  How long until Rich comes up there and finds us?”   _

_ “I don’t know!  But we have to try.  I love you. Do you love me?” _

There was silence after that, but Tate had heard more than enough.  He’d waited at the door, ignoring their moans and groans, until he heard the man say “Next week at the Arden, same day, same time?” and the woman say yes.  He’d hurried down the front desk, and checked the guestbook to see who was in twenty-two.  _ Katherine Isley and Stan Bowes,  _ it read.  No need to use the same name; plenty of people didn’t change their names when they got married.  

He finds the Arden eventually after walking a few more blocks, and goes around to a side door that’s (predictably) locked.  He rattles the doorknob, trying to force it open, and when that doesn’t work, he leans all his weight on it. Still locked. Tate briefly considers shooting through and reaching around to unlock it, before taking out his knife.  Maybe he can pick the lock with it.

The blade is thin enough to slide in, and Tate jimmies the lock with it until he hears a click and the door opens.  Slipping through, he heads down the hall. The Arden is smaller than the Cortez, and not hard to figure out, so he makes his rounds, stopping outside the doors, listening for sex or their voices.  Finding nothing on the first floor, he goes up to the second, and repeats himself. Nothing. Up to the third. 

He stops at thirty-one, hearing her voice.   _ “I told them.  I said I have a business trip Thursday.” _

_ “So we’ll go then?”   _ That’s Stan’s voice.  He’s got some kind of accent, East Coast, Tate guesses.  Even sounds a little like James. 

Raising a fist, Tate knocks, and Katherine answers.  “Wrong door,” she says, but before she can close it, Tate has the gun out and aimed at her chest.  Katherine’s mouth falls open, and she practically squeaks in terror. 

“Stan,” she wails.  “Stan, there’s a gunman!”  

“What?” Stan calls from inside, and Tate steps forward, jamming the gun into Katherine’s ribcage.  She backs up, tears running down her face. 

“Please,” she says.  “We’ll give you whatever you want.  Please let us go!”

“Shut up,” Tate says, “and sit down.”  Katherine collapses onto the bed and Stan pulls her to him, trying to shield her.  Useless. They’ll both go down anyway. Tate stares them down, letting the rage stream poison-like through his blood.  They’re both so fucking  _ weak.   _ Weak of flesh and weak of mind.  Weak for being so self-centered. How can they think of only themselves?  They probably never even stopped to think of what might happen if their spouses found out.  And now they’re planning to run away, leave it all behind. Leave their families behind so they can live out whatever fantasy they’re pretending they can have.  No. He’s going to set them straight.

“You’re so fucking selfish,” Tate snarls.  “What about your husband? Or your wife? Or your kids?  How the fuck do you think they’ll feel when they find out?  Oh, wait. You don’t think. You  _ never  _ think!  You’ll break your loved ones’ hearts and ruin their lives.  You’ll put them through utter hell just for instant gratification.  You’re the fucking dregs of this world.”

“You’re not well,” Stan says, his voice shaking.  “Lower the gun and we won’t call the cops.”

“We’re not doing what you think we’re doing!” Katherine cries.  “We’re not cheating. Neither of us are married. If you heard about the business trip--I told my parents.  We haven’t told them about us yet.”

Tate ignores her lies.  “Your children will grow up thinking their mother or father abandoned them.  Do you know what that’s like? To think your parent hated you so fucking much they left?  To blame yourself for that? To think there’s something so wrong with you that they had to leave?  Your kids deserve better. They need to know where you are.” He squeezes the trigger, and the familiar crack of bullet through body rings through the air.  Stan falls backwards, blood pouring from his skull; Katherine screams and runs for the door. Tate grabs her by the arm and forces the gun to her head.

“Stop!” Katherine shrieks.  “Just let me go and I won’t say a word!”

“Liar,” Tate hisses, and squeezes the trigger again, letting her fall to the floor.  Blood spatters all over his face, and as he surveys the room, he remembers that James wants something of them.

Their eyes.  They used their eyes to look at each other, and it led to them committing a sin.  Finding his knife again, Tate kneels before Katherine, opens her right eye wide, and slides his knife into the socket.  The eye comes loose easily, and Tate can’t help but gag a little when it falls into his hand. Biting his tongue, he shoves it into his bag and repeats the procedure with Katherine’s left eye and both of Stan’s.  

Now what to do with the bodies?  Hiding them will be impossible, so he drags Katherine and heaves onto the bed, positioning her and Stan so that he’s on top of her.  Now everyone will know them for what they were, and maybe even understand why they had to die. He was careful not touch anything anyway.  Once he’s cleaned himself and the weapons, he walks out, closing the door behind him.

Walking down the stairs, he’s light-footed, the weight of the world no longer dragging at his heels.  Tate goes out the side door and fills his lungs with sticky evening air; it’s never tasted so clean, so pure.  Letting it whistle out through his teeth, he goes back toward the Cortez, barely feeling his feet touch the ground.  He just might be dancing on air. They’re gone. They’ll never hurt anyone they love ever again. All that pain, spared, never to be felt.  It’s such a  _ relief. _

The minute he gets back to the Cortez, he runs up to seventy-eight.  James answers, he smiles widely when Tate shows him the eyes.

“Tell me everything.  Which commandment was it?”

“Adultery,” Tate says.  “They were here last week.  Katherine Isley and Stan Bowes.  They were both married, and they were going to run away.  I heard them say they were going to the Arden the next week, so I tracked them there and put a gun through their heads.  They were selfish to try and leave their spouses and kids behind like that. I saved their families all that pain. I think it’s easier to grieve someone than to know they loved you and they still hurt you.  You should never hurt anyone you love.”

“You shouldn’t,” James agrees.  “That’s the worst sin of all, I believe.  Now, shall we go and put these eyes in their proper place?”  Tate nods, and they go down to the room behind the wardrobe in sixty-four.  James mounts the eyes in the jar marked  _ Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery  _ and takes Tate’s hands in his own when he finishes.

“I still cannot believe it,” he says.  “The incredible luck I had to find you, of all people, to finish my work.  Let me tell you something. My life has, as of late, been horribly empty. There were times when I thought of ending it all, and I was deep in a mire of such thoughts when you arrived.  You came in here and rejuvenated me. You’ve given me new life; given me hope. I see now that life is not so bleak. It cannot be so long as people such as you and me exist, we who are determined to make something of it.  So thank you, Tate. Though we’ve known each other only shortly, I’ve come to be quite fond of you.”

Tate doesn’t know what to say to that, so he looks into James’s eyes instead.  There’s something there. Something deep and unreadable, but so, so strong. Rage?  Love? It’s impossible to tell. He tries to look harder, but James is gone, suddenly, and Tate’s hands fall.  He must have blinked when James walked out. Nothing odd about it.

***

The next murder happens entirely by chance, and he doesn’t even know what he’s going to do when he does it. 

It happens three days after the cheaters, in the hotel.  Tate is sitting at the bar, listening to Liz talk about an interesting party who once stayed a couple nights in 1987 (a man with fused fingers and a pair of conjoined women, with their daughter and grandson) when he sees them come in.  A man and a woman, holding hands. Liz stops talking, and starts watching them too. Then she shakes her head.

“He’s violent,” she says.  “Look at the way he holds her hand.  It’s like he’s trying to tear it off.”  Tate slides off the bar stool and goes over to the railing, leaning over for a better look.  Even from high above he can see that the woman’s knuckles have turned white. She’s clearly trying not to wince.

“I’m following them,” he tells Liz.  “Something could be up.”

“Something’s always up,” Liz says.  “Well, whatever you want. Just don’t leave a mess.”

Tate keeps watching from the railing, and waits until the couple starts heading for the stairs.  Then he follows them, trailing some feet behind, keeping his steps quiet so as not to make them turn around.  When they reach the fourth floor, they go into forty-three, and Tate waits outside for a moment. Nothing yet.  He has time, hopefully. After going back to his room and pocketing the knife and scissors, he gets their names from the front desk.  Lucy and Ben Gowan. When he looks up he sees them coming out of the elevator, making for the bar. Well. Here’s the perfect time.

He honestly has no idea if Ben will even do anything to Lucy.  Still, if he does, it’s an easy kill, and Tate doesn’t have go out and damn near have a panic attack to get it done.  Once they’re out of sight, he goes up to forty-three, picks the lock with his knife, and hides in the wardrobe, sitting in the darkness among the Gowans’ clothes.  

The darkness is quiet.  Comforting, almost. Tate closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wood, listening to the soft hiss of his own breathing.  He’s away from all of it, all the misery and dirt outside. He could stay in here forever, protected by the black, unable to feel any of the pain.  Part of him wants to curl up and never leave; another part screams that he can’t, that he has to do his part, that if he stays in here he’s just as weak as the rest of them.  Worse, even, because he’s been given an opportunity to be better and he’s throwing it away.

But the door opens, and he opens his eyes, hearing them come in.  They’re laughing together, obviously drunk. Tate leans forward, putting his eye to the crack between the wardrobe doors.  He can barely see anything, but what he can see is them dressing in their nightclothes and falling into bed, even though it’s only seven-thirty.  Minutes pass, and then Ben rolls over and wraps his hands around Lucy’s throat. She doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound. Is this some kind of suicide, or is she drugged?  They were drinking. The latter, probably.

As quietly as he can, Tate opens the wardrobe and steps out, sneaking up on Ben and cutting his throat before he even realizes someone’s there.  When Ben lands on the bed, he checks Lucy’s pulse. She’s dead. Well. Maybe that’s for the better. Were they to be found, people might think it was a murder-suicide.  But they won’t, because he’s disposing of these bodies. Whoever owns this place likely won’t be too pleased with rotting corpses stopping business.

Tate washes off the knife and wraps the bodies in a sheet, throwing it over his shoulder, which turns out to be a mistake, since he almost falls to his knees.  Clenching his jaw, he straightens up and walks out the door, looking around the hallway for anyone. It’s empty, so he starts for the stairs, only to bump into someone.

“Goodness,” she says, and he realizes it’s the maid.  Miss Evers, he remembers. “Which room, Mr. Langdon? I’ll clean it straightaway.”

“It’s fine, you don’t have to--”

“Oh, nonsense.  It’s a pleasure, really.  Now, which room?” She gazes up at him with an almost loving intensity, and he relents.

“Forty-three.”  She nods and is off, and Tate goes on his way, wondering what’s up with her.  James said she loved him, and that she would love Tate too. That meant creepily in love, apparently.  She must like murderers.

Before he shoves the bodies down the chute, he takes Ben’s fingers, the fingers he used to choke Lucy to death.  It’s only then that he realizes which commandment he just fulfilled. Thou shalt not commit murder. Tate would laugh aloud if he didn’t know he wasn’t breaking the commandment.  This isn’t murder. It’s mercy. Mercy for these soulless fucks who’re so pathetic they’re better off dead. Mercy for their families and friends, who don’t have to put up with them.  Mercy for the whole goddamn world.

He takes the stairs back up to the lobby, and the elevator to the seventh floor.  When James answers, he sees the fingers and says nothing, only takes the fingers and goes down to the room behind the wardrobe, where he puts the fingers in the proper jar (how he knows which one Tate has no idea) before he turns back to Tate.

“Come by my room tomorrow at eleven,” he says.  “I’ve been missing our conversations, so you need not bring anything.  You can tell me who these fingers belong to then. Alright?”

“Sure,” Tate answers, and James leaves him the room to look at the exhibit before him.

Five jars are filled.  He’s halfway done, but he wouldn’t be if he hadn’t gotten so lucky.  Tate rubs his eyes. He has to start going out more, however afraid he is.  Take the bus and prowl the neighborhoods; stay on the lookout for whoever breaks the commandments.  He’s suddenly aware of feeling horribly cramped, like he’s been curled in on himself for too long. 

He’ll start the day after tomorrow, since James wants to talk.  About what? Right now, Tate’s too tired to care. He wants the darkness again, the darkness that shuts out the world and lets him rest.  So he pulls the wardrobe to the wall, turns the light out in the room, and sits down, leaning his head against the wall and gazing up at the ceiling, letting the black envelop him, warmer than any blanket.


	5. you see, i’m all you need, all you want, we both agree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> March reveals his history to Tate, and together they advance to the second half of the murders.
> 
> The chapter title is from "All You Wanna Do" by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, from their show "Six: The Musical."
> 
> Trigger warning for brutal murder by knife and quite a bit of gore towards the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not entirely sure if Tate was aware that the ghosts of the Murder House were ghosts, though I do know that Nora took a liking to him and even served as a mother figure. Due to this uncertainty, I have decided to have him be surprised by the existence of ghosts, for what I consider to be a comedic reaction.

Tate’s eyes open to the blackness, and he winces.  Yeah, never sleeping sitting up again.  Not with this, the most fucking painful cramp he’s ever had.  Rubbing his neck, he stands and walks out, throwing a hand over his eyes when they start to water and burn.  “Go fuck yourself,” he mutters in the sun’s direction, and drags himself out to the hall.

“There you are, Mr. Langdon.  Mr. March is expecting you.” He blinks, and Miss Evers is standing right in front of him.

“He asked for me tomorrow.”

“My dear, it _is_ tomorrow.  You slept through the night in there.”  She clucks her tongue. “Dreadful for your body, I imagine.”

Tate rubs his eyes.  “What time is it?”

“Last I looked, almost eleven.”  Tate barely registers the last word before he takes off to the stairs, running up them two at a time because _shit,_ he’s probably late.  When he gets up to James’s room, the door is open, and James is waiting for him, a glass of wine in hand.

“Ah, there you are!  I was afraid you had forgotten.”

“I’m sorry, I overslept--”

“Don’t be.  I understand.  It’s quite exhausting to sink back into the world after flying so high above, isn’t it?  I always hated it. But we must endure, for we can’t merely go from person to person. We have to be careful, else we are found out.  Would you like to hear how I learned that?”

“You mean your life story?” Tate asks, sitting down across from James, who passes him a glass.

“I do.  Shall I begin?”

“Yeah.”  Tate takes a sip of wine and immediately regrets it.  How old can it be to make it so sour? James clears his throat, leans forward, and starts.

“Hello.”  His old-movie accent is gone, replaced by thick Brooklynese.  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Johnny Nolan.”

“That’s your real name?”

“The one I was born with, yes,” James says, falling back into his usual voice.  “And as you can hear, I don’t come from wealth. My father came over from County Cork in eighteen-ninety-two--”

 _“Eighteen-ninety-two?!”_ Tate yells.  Never mind the wine, how old is _James?_

“I’ll get to that, so don’t lose your head.  Yes, eighteen-ninety-two. He met and wed my mother in Brooklyn in ninety-four, and I was born the next year.  My sisters Ruth and Hildy followed the year after. It was a crowded house we grew up in, with barely an inch to turn around.  My parents worked in a textile factory all the day, and my father lost two fingers to the loom. They never healed properly, and he started drinking to numb the pain.  Well, it turned him into the meanest son of a bitch you’d ever meet. He gave my mother and sisters more black eyes than I can count, but not me. Never me. I think he thought I’d kill him if he tried.  I never did--he drank himself to death before that happened, when I was fourteen. That was when my mother took me out of school and got me a job washing the dishes at a bar down the street. I hated it in there, and that’s where I first considered taking another’s life.  The men who came to drink were hopeless; they would never make anything of themselves. They went to work, drank away their earnings, and beat their wives. There was one whom I particularly despised, an Italian who was forever afraid of his wife sleeping with another man.  He drank and drank and railed against her, and I thought that he might be better off dead. He would stop worrying then. So one night I slipped out early, found him vomiting in the alleyway, and slashed his throat. It was… I had never felt worthy of anything until then. This, I realized, was my true calling.  It was mercy to relieve them of their sorry states. And I will not lie and say it wasn’t absolutely exhilarating. Even the thought of lying with a girl wasn’t half as exciting.” James stops to take a drink, and Tate realizes he's still holding his own glass. He sets it down.

“How did you hide the body?”

“I didn’t.  I staged it to look a suicide.  He would have killed himself anyway, driving himself mad over his wife.  I put the knife in his hand and ran home. I was not so clever then.” He takes another drink, and continues.  “I didn’t want to stop, then. But there was a very small part of me that said I shouldn’t. That I would be thrown in prison to rot.  So I quelled my desires until I was sixteen, when the bartender, bless him, gave me a pipe of opium and suggested I try it. From there it was everything I told you before, everything I could find.  My mother was furious; she threatened to throw me onto the street if I didn’t stop. So I stopped, but it was not two months before I killed my second man. He was another drunk, and I nearly wept for joy when I cut out his heart.  Then I knew I could not stop, and that I had to get away from my mother. So I studied and worked to put myself through school, and ended up in Boston. I took a job with a haberdasher for some pocket money, and he talked me into investing in an oil well that he said was going to make him rich, very rich.  He was right. The well was deep and it kept on giving; I made half my fortune from it. Now I had a real opportunity to do as I pleased, but I finished school first. A man must be educated, yes?”

“I fucking hate school,” Tate says, downing the rest of his drink.  

“Times have changed, I suppose.  A shame you’ll never be able to go to university.  You would have liked it there. Now. After I graduated I went out here.  People back East are so snobbish; you work for your money and they look down their noses at you.  But the West was still young, and no one knew who I was. I arrived with a new name and plans to find something.  Well, I did find something, and I struck gold--or rather, coal. Mines and mines below the city, stretching on for miles.  A couple other fellows and I started bringing in miners to harvest it so we could sell it, and it made us wealthier. By then, I had already made plans to build my hotel, but I waited, sating myself with the blood of the useless, learning every inch of the city.  Ten years I waited, and then I began. Of course, the plans I had in my mind were hardly legal, so I drew up some innocent ones and sent them to the city officials. They were approved, and so I set about hiring men who wouldn’t question what they were creating. One did, and unfortunately I had to kill him.  Other than that, it went up without so much as a fearful whisper, and I opened it on August twenty-third, nineteen-twenty-six. I remember that day well, and not just for the opening. It was the day Rudolph Valentino died. Do you know of him?”

Tate tries to remember.  “He was an actor?”

“Precisely.  A guest announced his death, and I could not help but notice a woman run distraught from the room.  I went to comfort her, and found her ready to jump to her death. I saved her from committing such a rash act, and when I saw her face it was as if I had entered heaven.  She was a ravishing creature. Have you met her yet? She’s quite fond of ostentatious dress.”

“Does she wear gloves with knives on them?”  Tate’s mind is reeling. She’s alive. What is this place?  Does it stop aging?

“Yes.”  A brief, black look crosses over James’s face.  “I shall have to speak to her about that. Well.  She was upset about Valentino, but somehow she fell in love with me--or I thought she did.  We had a very quiet wedding, and I was the happiest man in the world. She took joy in my killings, and would watch without flinching when I cut out a man’s tongue.  Then I found out about her and Valentino. She wasn’t merely grieving for a man she had fallen in love with through the silver screen. She had been a lover to him and his wife.  And he was alive--he had falsified his death, for some preposterous reason. I was there when she found them again, and she was going to run away with them. What kind of good husband would I be, to let my dear wife run from me?  I had them taken care of, and we would have had a son had she not decided to get rid of him. She failed--the boy is in thirty-three if you wish to visit him, though I should warn you that he is not a handsome child. We continued on as we had, and I conceived of and began my Ten Commandments murders.  I had only completed two when she turned me in, as I told you. The police were about to break down my door, and I did not wish in the slightest to be imprisoned. So I resorted to something that might be called drastic.” James reaches up and unties his ascot, letting it fall away from his throat, and Tate thinks he might honest-to-god pass out.  There’s a wound in James’s neck, a gaping red smile cut deep into the flesh.

“I--”  Tate tries to find words.   _“What the fuck?!”_

“I’m dead, dear.”  James smiles, a little sheepishly.  “I’ve been dead for over fifty years.”

 _“What.  The. FUCK?!”_ Tate’s shrieking now, and he cringes from the pitch of his own voice.  “I’m sorry, it’s just--you’re a ghost?”

“Yes.  That’s why I can’t finish the murders.  This hotel has a habit of trapping people, sadly.”

“Why didn’t you tell me until now?”

“Because, Tate, if I told you I was dead the first time I saw you, you would have run from the room thinking I was a madman.  Better for you to think I was living until I had your trust. I’m truly sorry about the lying, but you understand, I hope?”

“Jesus fuck.”  Tate shakes his head.  “What year did you die?”

“I don’t quite recall, now that it’s been so long.  Sometime in the early thirties.”

“Who else here is dead?   Your wife?”

“No, she’s alive, and through some truly unholy means.  But Sally is like me, and so is Miss Evers. She asked me to kill her when the police came.  What could I do but oblige her? She was always the kindest of help.”

“So you asked me to keep up these murders because you can’t leave?”

“Yes.  And do you know why?  Because I trust you. Because I know that you’ll understand everything.  You’re different from the rest of them; you’re open-minded. You don’t shut the darkness out from your heart.  You revel in it. You’re just like me.” Before Tate can say anything, James presses on. “Have you any plans for the next five?”

“I’m gonna start leaving the hotel more.  If I keep waiting around for people here, it’ll take me forever.  So I’ll take the bus around the city, kill people in their homes. I can wear gloves; they won’t be able to trace it back to anyone.  They’re not even looking for me in the state.”

“Perfect,” James says.  Then he hesitates. “But… I was I hoping I might partake in the next one.  It’s been so long since I’ve had someone to do this with, and I rather miss it.  My wife prefers to keep her distance nowadays. You don’t mind one more in here?”

“No.  You want me to find someone?”

“I’ve already someone in mind.  Thomas Rogan. A pastor who’s been using money donated by his congregation to fund his own vacations to Moscow and London.  That money is collected for his church, in God’s name. He abuses the Lord’s name when he uses the money for himself.”

“Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain,” Tate recites, and James nods.

“Yes.  Do you mind if I do more than watch?”

“I don’t.  What do you want to do?”

“Anything.”  James’s eyes gleam.  “Anything at all, as long as we give him his comeuppance.  He’s here now, in eighty-one. Shall we go and give him some good old-fashioned justice?”

“Do you have anything on you?”

“I always have a knife with me, and I suggest you do too.  You never know who might think you suspicious.”

“I’m one step ahead of you.”  Tate shows him the knife he used to cut Ben’s throat.  They leave the room and take the stairs up to the next floor, where Tate knocks on Rogan’s door.  “Mr. Rogan? It’s the front desk. We need to clarify something with you.”

“Come in,” Rogan calls.  “It’s open.” Tate turns the knob and he walks in expecting James to follow, but when he looks behind him James is gone.  He must have disappeared. Ghosts can usually do that, Tate figures. “Aren’t you a little young to work here?” Rogan asks, and Tate catches a glimpse of James stepping out of the shadows near the window.

“Mr. Rogan,” James says.  “How did you pay for a night here?”

“Lord Jesus!”  Rogan jumps and turns around.  “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to hear you confess.  Surely a man of God has his own sins to tell.”

“I don’t know you,” says Rogan.  “Please leave.”

“Ah-ah-ah, I’m afraid I can’t.  Not until you tell me where that money went.”

“What money?” Rogan cries, sweat sliding down from his hairline.  Tate grabs him from behind and pins his arms behind his back. Rogan yells in pain.  “Let go of me! I’ll scream.”

“Sssshhh,” Tate soothes.  “You love God, don’t you?”

“Y-yes.  I do.  Why are you attacking me?”

“Then you’ll be very happy to meet him,” says James.  “Come now. There’s no need to lie. Where did the money go?”

“What’d you see?” Tate asks, enjoying himself more than he ever has doing this alone.  “Westminster? The Red Army?”

“No!  If this is about money for the collection--I never touched it!  How do you know?”

“I know everything,” James tells him.  “There’s nothing you can hide, so you might as well let it all out.”

“I’m not hiding anything!  Get off me!” Rogan shrieks, jerking around like a fish caught in a nest of electric wires.  Tate clucks his tongue sadly.

“It’s fucking pathetic how bad of a liar you are.  Come on. Don’t you wanna go to God absolved of your sins?”

“I’ve done nothing!” screams Rogan.  “Both of you are completely insane!”

“Yes, I suppose we are,” James murmurs.  “But you are not so sane yourself. What kind of sane, good man takes money from innocent people for himself?  You call yourself a man of God? You are hardly worthy of the title of man.” He catches Tate’s eye over Rogan’s shoulder, and nods.  There’s the signal. Tate drives his knife through Rogan’s back just as James slashes his throat. James’s eyes light up as blood spatters his face, and he suddenly pulls Rogan away from Tate and slams him to the floor, plunging his knife into the howling Rogan over and over and over and _over,_ until the blood soaks through Tate’s shoes.  Tate watches in awe, barely aware of his surroundings as Rogan thrashes around and then lies limp, but James doesn’t stop; the knife keeps rising and falling, and when James stands his entire suit is soaked scarlet.  His chest is rising and falling rapidly, his hair has fallen out of place, and he looks absolutely ecstatic.

“My god,” he says to Tate.  “My god! I haven’t felt so alive since… well, since the day I died.  Thank you. Thank you heartily. Now, will you take his tongue? I’m sorry I took this one away from you; you should have the final honor.”

“Sure.”  Tate kneels in the pool of blood and pries open Rogan’s mouth, reaching in as far as he can go and sawing off the tongue.  It comes away, long and pink and bloody from where Rogan bit it in pain, and it squelches wetly when he closes his hand around it.  His jeans are sticky with blood, but he hardly feels it; he can’t stop seeing James stabbing Rogan over and over, and the look on his face when he stood up.  The look of euphoric rapture, the look of one gloriously drunk on power and bloodshed. It’s fucking beautiful, and (Tate’s not going to lie), kind of a turn-on.  

Leaving the body for Miss Evers to attend to, they go back to the room behind the wardrobe and mount the tongue in the jar marked _Thou Shalt Not Take the Lord’s Name in Vain._ As soon as the jar clicks back into place, James taps Tate on the shoulder.  When Tate turns to him, James grabs his face, leaving bloody handprints.

“I said before that I was quite fond of you.  That was an understatement. I am not merely fond of you.  I have come to love you, to depend upon you. You are what I want from the world; no, what I need to endure this living death.  Without you, I don’t know what I would have resorted to. Once again, thank you. From all of my heart, thank you.”

He’s close enough that Tate can feel his breathing (or he thinks he does, do ghosts breathe?).  Close enough to hear a heartbeat, if there’s one. But not too close. No. This is right.

James’s lips press against Tate’s forehead, and when he pulls away he’s gone.  Disappeared. Tate wishes he would stay, just once. Maybe go further than forehead kisses.

No.  Not thinking about that right now.  He’s got some clothes to borrow from Sally, and some buses to catch.


	6. fancy gloves, though, wears macheath, dear, so there’s not a trace of red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The seventh murder is completed, and Tate might not hate Sally so much after all.
> 
> The chapter title is from "Mack the Knife" by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, from their show "Die Dreigroschenoper", or "The Threepenny Opera."
> 
> Trigger warning for murder by gun, mention of drug use, slight suicidal ideation, and intimate physical contact between an underage person and an adult (that will soon be remedied).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I intended this one to be longer initially, but I've been busy with classes and as a result this is short. I'm sorry.  
> 2\. I was doing some research for this chapter and found out that Tate and Sally both died the same year as Kurt Cobain (1994) and that they're both grunge fans. I wonder if his death had anything to do with their behavior leading up to their own deaths.  
> 3\. Tate's opinions on Much Ado About Nothing are not my own. I think it's a work of comedic genius.

He steps off the bus, looks up at the house, and lets out his breath.  No one recognized him. He’s out for a second time and no one’s recognized him.  Where are they searching now? Oregon. Nevada. _Massachusetts,_ for some ridiculous reason.  SEARCH FOR THE WESTFIELD HIGH SHOOTER CONTINUES, the _Times_ read this morning.  Fucking idiots. They can’t even find him in their own city, and they won’t as long as he keeps on the gloves Sally gave him, to keep his fingerprints off everything.

He’s getting cocky.  Must be James rubbing off on him.  Well, that’s a good thing. Tate’s sick of being scared.  Sick of hiding. Let them be scared of him. Let them run and hide.  He’ll play with them and hunt them down, revelling in every quivering breath they draw, knowing they know that breath could be their last.

The moon rises white and round as he slips around the back of the house.  The windows are dark--they must be asleep. Perfect. He tries the door, and finds it open.  Jesus fuck. How stupid can you be? What is this, a shitty slasher movie? Stepping inside, he finds the kitchen table littered with used needles, and cringes.  It’s a junkie house, no fucking wonder. Who the hell else worships goddamn _Loki?_

He found them through an old advertisement in a magazine, something about keeping the trickster god from hurting you by praying to him.  One of the stupidest things he’s ever read, and he’s read _Much Ado About Nothing._ There was an address.  So he took the bus route that goes by there, and did a little sneaking around.  There was some old symbol painted on front window, two snakes intertwining into an ‘S’.  The weirdos were still there.

So here he is, in the middle of the kitchen, trying to keep his steps quiet, even though the floor creaks worse than old bones.  He walks out the kitchen door and finds the stairway. A single framed picture hangs askew along the stairs: three young men, one dark-haired, one red-haired, and one with hair dyed bright blue.  They look high, and the redhead is flipping off the camera. Tate rolls his eyes. Pathetic.

He reaches the top of the stairs and steals down the hallway, praying that none of the doors are squeaky.  When he opens the door he finds the men asleep, one of them sprawled out on the floor without so much as a blanket.  Probably fell asleep high.

“Wes, get the fuck back in bed,” grumbles the one on the floor, the blue-haired one.  “Stop waking me up.”

“I’m _in_ bed, Evan,” snaps the dark-haired man, now awake.  It takes everything for Tate not to bang his head against the wall and curse himself out.  Instead he quickly backtracks, pressing himself against the wall where they won’t be able to see him.  Shit. _Shit!_ They heard him.  He’s going to get caught.  He’s going to get caught and get thrown in jail and put on death row and--

“You’re both high.  Shut up,” mumbles the redhead.

“Fuck off, Denis.  I’m not high,” protests Wes.

“Yeah, fuck off,” Evan echoes, rolling onto his stomach with a thump.  Tate waits, every muscle in his body painfully tense. A minute where every second feels like an hour.  Another. Another. And then the soft, even breathing of sleep. Tate picks his way over to the men, levels his gun at Evan’s head, and fires.  He doesn’t even wake up, only jolts as the bullet goes through his skull and lies there bleeding out.

“What the _fuck?!”_ Wes shrieks, jumping out of bed and seeing Tate.  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Loki?” Tate asks.  “Where’ll he take you after this?”  

“Listen, man, if you’re mad about that, you can fuck right off.  We don’t bother anyone about their shit, okay?” Denis quavers, raising his hands in the air as if a cop told him to.  Tate snorts, and pulls the trigger on him. He falls to the floor and Wes screams, burrowing into a corner.

“Please,” he begs, “please don’t kill me, I’ll do whatever you want, give you whatever you want, _anything!_ I’ll convert, I’ll blow you, I don’t care; _don’t kill me!”_

Tate hears the bullet crack forth from the gun, tearing through Wes’s flesh and bone.  He slumps to the floor, and Tate leaves the room, looking for something to mark them with.  Downstairs he finds a room with the snake symbol painted on the door, and behind the door he finds a human-sized statue of a wily-looking man.  Their god. He lifts it with a grunt and somehow makes it upstairs with it in his arms. Once back in the bedroom, he places the statue at the head of the bed and arranges the bodies so that they lie beneath it in a mockery of bloody sacrifice.  

Now what to take from them?  Their hearts, which loved the wrong god?  Their tongues, which offered up heathen prayers?  Their eyes, which likely gazed upon the statue with reverence?  He’s already taken all of those before. There has to be something else.  

Their ears.  Their ears, which thought they heard the call of this god.  He’ll take one from each. He bends over the nearest body--Evan’s--and, taking out his knife, grasps the ear in one hand while he saws it off with the other.  He repeats the process with the other two bodies, and comes away with three bloody ears in his bag. James is gonna love this.

Tate’s halfway to the stairs when he remembers his gloves.  They’re covered in blood, and his face feels wet. He stops in the bathroom and, trying to ignore the syringes strewn across the sink, rinses the gloves off and washes his face.  When he looks less like he’s had a nasty run-in with a car and a squirrel crossing the road, he leaves the house, stepping over stray trash and closing the door.

Waiting for the bus in the dark, he shoves the gloves deep into his bag.  It’s never cold enough for gloves around here, and dishwashing gloves like these will immediately arouse suspicion.  He doesn’t look like he’s coming home from a shift in a kitchen somewhere. He looks like a weird guy in an oversized sweatshirt and Dodgers cap.  Already shady. If he had more confidence he wouldn’t wear the hat, but if anyone gets a good look, it’s good-bye Cortez, hello lifelong prison sentence.   Good-bye _James._  And he can’t leave James, not now.  Not ever. Not when he’s found someone who gets him.  Not when he’s found someone who loves him, and who he loves back.

The bus pulls up and he boards, sitting in the back, finding the Walkman and headphones Sally gave him.   _You won’t look so suspicious with this,_ she’d said.   _They’ll just think you’re sleeping._ He didn’t take any tapes with him when he ran away (obviously), but she tossed him a few she’d stolen or found around.   _Listen, don’t listen, whatever.  Just keep the headphones on._

He gropes blindly for the tape he brought and slides it in.  Kurt Cobain’s voice blares in his ears, comfortingly familiar yet quite fucking painful to hear since April.   _Come as you are, as you were/As I want you to be/As a friend, as a friend/As an old enemy/Take your time, hurry up/Choice is yours, don’t be late/Take a rest as a friend/As an old memoria…_

Damn.  Sally’s got good ears, apparently.  He taps his fingers along to the beat, his nails clicking on the windowsill.   _And I swear that I don’t have a gun/No, I don’t have a gun/No, I don’t have a gun…_

But he had a gun.  That’s how he did it.  That’s how they found him.  And that’s how they’ll find _them._ The thought of those bodies being found sends a thrilling shiver up Tate’s spine.  The cops will look and look and look and they’ll never know who it was. He’ll be their ghost, their enigma, their Jack the Ripper.  Their greatest frustration and their greatest failure. Oh, but it’s fucking wonderful, that sweet, sweet control. No more swallowing down lungfuls of blood and muck.  The air grows cleaner with every crack of the bullet, every knife sunk into flesh. One day it’ll be completely pure, if he can keep this up. James won’t mind if he keeps going after the jars are filled, he’s sure.

The bus stops at the corner of the 300 block of Spring, and he gets off, walking back to the hotel.  The lobby is dimly lit, and Liz is manning the front desk. She gives him a wave as he goes by, and he returns it.

“Hey,” someone says behind him, and he turns around.  He doesn’t jump anymore; he’s used to people appearing and disappearing around him now.  James likes to do it.

“Hey,” he says to Sally, who’s sitting in a chair, her ever-present cigarette almost burned down to a stub.  “Thanks for the tape.”

“You listened?  I thought you wouldn’t bother.”

“It was Nirvana.  I miss listening to them.”

“Yeah, they’re the shit, aren’t they?  Fucking sucks what happened to Kurt.”

“Yeah.”  Jesus Christ, does he actually want to stay and _talk_ to her?  Sally, who called him a junkie whore the first time they met?  Tate can’t remember the last time he’s talked with someone who doesn’t make him want to die, James being the exception.  Maybe… maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe he’s found more than one person who gets him.

He takes the elevator up to the seventh floor and knocks on James’s door.  James answers, still dressed despite the late hour. Tate wonders if he has to get undressed, or if he can just change his appearance at well.  Do ghosts even need to sleep?

“You’re back!” James says joyously.  “Who was it this time?”

“Junkies praying to Loki.”

“Who is this _Loki?”_

“Some trickster god; I don’t really know.  They had other gods before God. It was easy.”

“Ah, yes.  Well then, come with me.”  They go down the stairs to sixty-four, and into the room behind the wardrobe.  Tate fishes the ears out of his bag and tries to hand them to James, but he refuses.

“No.  You should mount them this time, I think.  It’s an honor.” Tate nods and finds the jar labeled _Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me._ Lifting the glass, he finds a long, thin pole.  Biting his tongue in concentration, he carefully impales the first ear and slides it to the bottom of the pole, and does the same with the other two.  When he turns back, James takes his hand, but he doesn’t hold it like before. Instead he raises it to his eyes and studies it.

“Your hands are so clean,” he says.  “Gloves, I presume?” Tate nods. “A wise decision, and one after my own heart.  What did you do with the bodies?”

“They had this statue.  I left the bodies under it, like sacrifices.”  Tate smiles, and instinctively looks at the floor.  He’s never been this pleased with himself before, and he’s positive that he looks like a complete idiot smiling this hard.  James makes a noise of disapproval and places two chilly fingers underneath Tate’s chin, tipping it upwards.

“Why hide your joy?” he asks.  “You’ve done well. You should be pleased with yourself, and, if you do not mind me saying, you have a handsome smile.  The girls at your school must have been mad for you.”

“Yeah, maybe.”  He never thought much of the girls at school.  They were all wastes of skin and bone, like everyone else.  Everyone except James. And Sally, maybe. He should talk to her; see if she has more Nirvana tapes.

He’s suddenly aware of James resting his head against his own, his fingers stroking Tate’s face.  Tate reaches up and rests his hands on the nape of James’s neck, running his fingers over the cold flesh.  If he moves forward less than inch, he can kiss him, warm lips against cold ones.

James’s mouth brushes against Tate’s ear.  “Good night,” he whispers, and then he’s gone, but Tate’s not alone.  Sally’s standing in front of him, tears spilling from her eyes.

“You want him,” she says.  “Come with me. There’s only three more.”


	7. i’m so happy ‘cause today i found my friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sally and Tate bond, and the eighth murder is quite gruesome.
> 
> The chapter title is from "Lithium" by Nirvana, which is also the song featured in this chapter.
> 
> Trigger warning for mentions of self-harm, suicide, rape, abuse, death by overdose, death by falling, death by knife, and gore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This was going to include two murders, but it ended up being longer than I expected, and I didn't want it to keep running on.  
> 2\. I was rewatching Murder House and Hotel at the same time for this, and I realized just how similar Tate and Sally are, to the point where she's almost his female counterpart. Grungey ghosts with a need to be loved and other mental health issues. I feel like they'd be friends, but I also feel like they'd bring out the worst in each other.  
> 3\. I have a special chapter planned for Tuesday. Stay tuned!

He wakes to the sound of someone strumming a guitar incessantly.  “Shut that shit off,” he mumbles, rolling over and finding Sally in the chair beside the bed, picking out a tune.  “What is that?”

“The _Halloween_ theme, you heathen,” she says.  “What? You’ve never seen it?”

“Am I in your room?”

“I’m in yours.  You passed out after Mr. March left last night.  Guess that murder took a hell of a lot more out of you than you thought.  I had to carry you to bed.” She grins. “Not going soft now, are we?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Tate groans, rubbing his eyes.  “Your music’s giving me a headache.”

“Fine.”  Sally sets the guitar aside and sits beside Tate on the bed.  “So. Three more and you’re in love with Mr. March.”

“Yeah.  So what?”  Tate shrugs.  There’s no use in hiding it now, since he’s pretty sure she saw them together.  Sally sighs, the tears in her eyes overflowing.

“You shouldn’t be.  He’ll suck you dry and throw you out an empty husk.  I _told_ you.”

“Then why are you helping me?  What’s with all the shit you’re doing to keep me from getting caught?”

“We have an agreement.  I do what he says, and he protects me.”

“From what?”

Sally shakes her head.  “You ever use?”

“Twice,” Tate says.  “Meth. When I--”

“When you shot those kids, yeah.  Only twice, huh? Then you won’t see it.”  When Tate frowns at her in confusion, Sally explains.  “There’s this… _thing._ He says I made it happen, me and all the other addicts.  It’s like some kind of demon, and it’s got this drill-bit thing at its crotch.  It rapes you with it. It raped _me_ with it, until Mr. March showed up and said he’d keep it away from me if I… well, you’ll know soon.”

“I’ll know what?” Tate asks.   _God._  Why does she have to be so fucking cryptic all of a sudden?

“I can’t tell you.  Mr. March would be mad.”  Sally swipes at her tears, smearing her makeup across her cheeks.  “Anyway. I’ve got someone for you to go after.”

“Now?”  Tate blinks, realizing just how much time he’s spent killing people since he met James.  How long has it been? Weeks? Months? Time passes differently in here with James, in a dizzying sweep of blood and almost never-ending euphoria.  Wait. How old is he?

“What day is it?”

“Do I look like I know?” Sally snaps, but she concedes.  “Friday. October twenty-eighth.”

So he’s eighteen, then.  Sex with him is legal now, but buying himself a drink still isn’t.  Fucking wonderful. Who decided that the law should be such utter _bullshit?_

“Hey!”  Sally snaps her fingers in front of his face.  “Do you wanna hear who it is or not?” Tate nods, and she goes on.  “There was a guy staying here a while ago. Jordan Verrill. He got drunk and told me everything; he’d come in because his wife kicked him out, ‘cause he fell in love with his friend’s wife.  He left after a week. Said he was moving to the King. I bet he’s still there.”

“I can get him tonight,” Tate says, and yeah, he just shot those junkies last night, but he’s close.   _They’re_ close, and once it’s over, James might give him what he wants.  Besides, he can’t let any opportunity slip. There are still so many disgusting things out there just begging to be erased from existence.  He’s had it with tuning them out and letting them carry on. The quicker he can get to them, the better.

“Great,” Sally says.  She hesitates for a minute, then asks her question.  “You mind if I stay here? I’ve been real fucking lonely lately.”

“Yeah.”  If this were anyone else (besides James), Tate would scream at her to get out.  But Sally’s turned out to be kind of cool, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss listening to music with someone.  Addie used to come into his room and sit with him, or lie on the floor when the days got bad, and listen to whatever he’d put on.  Just the two of them, comfortably silent while Nirvana or Soundgarden blared from the speaker.

Addie.   _God._ He should have taken her with him.  She deserves better than that bitch telling her she’s ugly all the time.  Maybe he can go back for her, or call her here. James probably won’t mind as long as Tate finishes off the murders.

“You have any more tapes?” Tate asks, and Sally nods.

“You still have _Nevermind_ , if that’s what you want.”  He finds the bag on the bed next to him, and pulls out the tape.  She takes it and slides into a tape deck perched on the bedside table.  

“Where’d that come from?”

“I brought it in.  There’s a hell of a lot of stuff to swipe around here, if you know where to look.”  She presses play, and Kurt’s indifferent yarl fills the room. _I’m so happy ‘cause today I found my friends/They’re in my head/I’m so ugly, that’s okay, ‘cause so are you/We broke our mirrors…_

“Christ,” Sally says, taking a drag on a cigarette.  “Like I said last night. This is the _shit.”_ Tate doesn’t say anything, only nods in agreement.  He sits on the edge of the bed, letting himself get lost in the snarling guitar and drums.  Sally nods her head to the beat, singing along quietly. She’s got a good voice. Not anything amazing, but better than half the assholes out there who think they can sing, including fucking Larry.  The song hits the bridge, and he starts singing along with her, like he and Addie used to do when a song was particularly catchy.

 _“I like it, I’m not gonna crack; I miss you, I’m not gonna crack; I love you, I’m not gonna crack; I killed you, I’m not gonna crack,”_ he sings with her and the track, and she smiles at him.  Not a smirk. A real smile. Her teeth are crooked and stained, but her smile is warm, and he can’t help but smile back at her.  This is a different kind of feeling than what comes with killing. That’s catharsis; that’s a release of pent-up anger and fury that’s been boiling in him for too long.  This is familiar, almost comforting. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine that Addie’s next to him, her head on his shoulder. Or Beau, before they put him in that fucking hellhole of an attic and killed him.

“I gotta tell you something,” Sally says, snapping Tate out of his head.  “I’m dead.”

“I know.  He told me.”

“Of course he did,” Sally mutters angrily, flipping her cigarette into a trash can.  “I shouldn’t be. That bitch downstairs pushed me out the window.”

“Liz?”

“Iris.  Old lady at the front desk?  That’s her. I was dealing to her son; he _loathed_ her.  I thought she was the fucking devil, the way he talked about her.  He and I came here last month, and I gave him what he wanted. It was too much for him; he OD’d.  Iris damn near broke down the door to find him, and when she found him dead, she pushed me out the window.  I was higher than the fucking stars; I didn’t even realize she’d pushed me until I was falling. I woke up later, inside the same room.  He was gone by then; the fucking Countess turned him. Lucky bastard. I’ve been wandering around ever this place since, and goddamn, am I glad you’re here.  People come and go, but you, you’re different. You get just as lonely as I do.”

“I…”  Tate’s at a loss for words.  He’s never considered himself a lonely person before.  A loner, sure, but not lonely. People drive him insane; they make him want to slit his wrists, or drive a knife into their skulls.  But he’s been so much more… _okay_ since he came here.  Since he met James, and Sally too, he guesses.  Maybe he has been lonely. “I guess. I like being alone.”

“I hate it.  If I’m alone, it means someone left me.  They always leave. My sister ran away with her boyfriend.  My parents kicked me out the day I turned eighteen. No drugs in this house, they said.  Fucking hypocrites. They were Xanax addicts.”

“My dad left,” Tate says.  “I was six and he ran away with the maid.  Just like _that.”_ He snaps his fingers.  “I don’t blame him for wanting to get away from my mother.   _She’s_ the fucking devil.  I blame him for leaving us.  My sisters, my brother, and me.  We deserve better than her and her fucking liquor.  If he’d stuck around, she wouldn’t have torn us down like she did.”

“See, you’re wrong there,” Sally contradicts, jabbing a finger in Tate’s direction.  “Shitty people are shitty people regardless of who’s around. They don’t think about anyone but themselves.  She would have been a bitch no matter what.”

“Probably.”  Tate shrugs, and gets a look at the clock.  Two-thirty. Christ, how long did he sleep, and how long have they been talking?  He should get going and take out this Verrill guy. If Sally knows about him, then James might too, and he’s probably waiting.  “I wanna keep talking, but I think I should go. You said Verrill’s at the King?”

“Yeah.  You’ll come back later?”

“Yeah, I’ll find you after.  I don’t think this’ll take longer than a couple hours.”  He throws on a hoodie--it’s gloomy outside, so he won’t look like a complete idiot in it, and is about to find his knife and gun when he stops.  It’s always been the knife or the gun. He wants to use something different. “Where’s the kitchen?”

“Downstairs.”

“Thanks.”  Tate slings his bag over his shoulder, grabs his key and knife (he’ll need it to cut something off anyway), and walks out.  Downstairs, he finds the kitchen down a hall from the elevator, and walks in. It’s empty. Rummaging through the various drawers, he finds what he’s looking for: a long, sharp kitchen knife.  It’s longer than the one he usually uses, and looks like it could cut through layers of tissue and muscle, right down to the bone. He drops it in his bag and goes back out the front door. Iris is at the front desk.  So she’s a murderer too. He’s not sure if he should admire her for having the guts to do that, or hate her for robbing Sally of a life. Whatever. He’s got Verrill to stake.

He has to take the bus to the King, since it’s on another side of town.  Once he steps off, he realizes he has no idea which room Verrill is in, and almost bangs his head against the hotel door.  Fucking idiot. Now he’s going to have to ask at the front desk, and who the hell wears a hood inside? He should have brought a hat.  Hats are less suspicious.

Sucking in a deep breath, Tate walks through the door and up to the front desk.  A blonde-haired young woman stands there, reading a book. “Can I help you?” she asks, clearly bored.

“Yes.”  Tate tries to deepen his voice, and gives up after the first word.  He sounds like he’s failing at a Christopher Lee impression. “I’m here to visit Jordan Verrill?”  

“Room two-seventeen,” the girl says, and goes back to her book.  Tate catches the title on his way to the elevator. _The Shining._ Not bad.  

Two-seventeen is only four doors down from the elevator, and Tate knocks on the door.  “Mr. Verrill? I’ve got mail for you.”

“I told her to stop writing me,” a thin voice calls from inside, but a weedy-faced man opens the door.  Tate slams the door into him, causing him to stumble backwards, and goes in, closing the door.

“Who sent you?” Verrill cries.  “Lynda? I apologized so many times!  I left because she deserves better!”

“Good,” Tate says.  “Then you already know you deserve to die.”

“W-what?” quavers Verrill.  “I--I don’t--”

“What’s her name?” asks Tate.  “Your friend’s wife. Who is it you wanna fuck so badly that you ruined your family’s life?”

“Not anymore!” Verrill shrieks, pressing himself against the wall.  “I’m done with that. I’m starting clean!”

Lies, the whole fucking lot of them.  Tate draws the knife out of his bag, holding it behind his back so Verrill doesn’t see it.  Verrill’s lips tremble, and he inches along the wall, sidling up to the wardrobe. The second he stops moving, Tate wraps a hand around his throat.  Verrill struggles, thrashing around under Tate’s fingers, but he’s skin and bones and no muscle, and Tate raises the knife for him to see. Verrill opens his mouth to scream, and Tate tightens his hand, rendering him silent.  Looking straight into Verrill’s terrified eyes and relishing it, because _Jesus fuck,_ that look is better than any high, Tate drives the knife through his heart, hearing it slide through muscle and tissue and into drywall and wood.  When he lets go, Verrill is still pinned to the wall, his feet limp on the ground. He should leave it that way; it looks cool. But there’s still the piece for the jar to be taken.  

Chopping off his dick would be symbolically relevant, but Tate doesn’t think he can do that without throwing up.  He’s already done the heart, with Jenny. What’s left? The nose? The eyes? The feet?

The brain.  The brain that decided it wanted another woman.  He finds his smaller knife. _Please let this be sharp enough._

Reaching up (thank god Verrill is short), he shoves the knife through skin and bone, drawing it around in a circle so he can take the top off.  It comes away easily, and, grimacing, Tate carefully removes the brain, wet and squishing around his fingers. He drops it in his bag and leaves the top of Verrill’s head on the floor, stepping over it on his way out.  The kitchen knife can stay--no one will miss only one.

He gets back to the Cortez before sunset, and goes up to seventy-eight right away.  Sally will have to wait. The door is open, so he goes in and finds James sitting in a chair with what looks like a glass of whiskey.  He must hear Tate behind him, because he stands and turns before Tate says anything.

“Which one this time?” he asks, his eyes lighting up.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,” Tate says, and launches into the story, knowing by now that James wants to hear every bloody detail.  “This guy, Jordan Verrill--his wife kicked him out when she found out he wanted a friend’s wife. He said he was sorry, but he wasn’t. I bet if he’d had another chance with that woman, he would have gone after him.”

“There’s no doubt he would have,” James agrees.  “Most men are such weak things, sadly. Better for his poor wife that he die before he can break her heart again.”  He extends a hand. “Shall we?” Tate takes his hand, and they walk down the stairs to sixty-four and into the room behind the wardrobe, where Tate mounts the brain in the jar.  It squelches loudly as it slides down on the pole, but it goes down easily, so at least he doesn’t have to touch it for that long.

When he turns around, James is gone.  No words of praise. No physical contact.  Tate isn’t disappointed; he knows James’s game.  He’s making him work for it, making him want what he can’t have so he’ll finish the work.  It’s simple, really.

So he doesn’t stay in there.  Instead, he goes and finds Sally at the bar.

“Hey,” she says, smiling her crooked-toothed smile at him.  “You’re back. I didn’t think you’d actually come find me.”

“Why the hell shouldn’t I?” he asks.  “You’re not half bad.”

“Please, I’m wonderful,” she says as he joins her at the table.  She lights him a cigarette, and they sit at a booth, falling easily back into conversation.  It’s the most relaxed without drugs they’ve both been in… who knows how long, honestly.


	8. a criminal mind is all i’ve ever known

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ninth murder passes, but more importantly, it's Devil's Night at the Hotel Cortez.
> 
> The chapter title is from "A Criminal Mind" by Gowan.
> 
> Trigger warning for mentions of child physical and sexual abuse, murder by knife, and gore.
> 
> Let it be recorded that this chapter was posted on 30 October 2018. Happy Devil's Night!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I skipped writing the ninth murder because frankly, it's getting a bit boring writing so much of it. There are only so many ways to kill people.  
> 2\. Out of the murderers who appear in the Devil's Night episode of Hotel, I was only able to use Gacy because he died on 10 May 1994, and the rest died after 30 October 1994. March is mentioned to have had a hand in Charles Manson's murders in that episode, so I decided that he's influenced way more people than the ones we see in the show; he just phases them out every few years because he likes to keep the party small.  
> 3\. I'm pretty sure Devil's Night is 30 October, not Halloween. It's the name traditonally associated with today.  
> 4\. I should add a disclaimer here that I do not commend anything that happens in this fic. Not school shootings, not rape, and certainly not murder. No one in this story is a good person in the least. They think they are, but they're not. Please don't rape and murder people.

Tate walks in through the hotel doors, blood staining his bag.  He’ll have to find Miss Evers and give it to her. Fucking Wilkeses testified falsely in court, saying that they didn’t hear little Darrell Sampson screaming as his father held him down and beat him half to death, so it must not have happened.  Only the fantasy of a disturbed child. That man walked free because of them, free to beat all of his children as many times as he likes. It was too easy to kill them, to stab them over and over and over again with another kitchen knife, screaming curses at them.   _FUCKING BASTARDS!  WHERE’S THE JUSTICE?  WHERE’S JUSTICE FOR THE KIDS HE’S FUCKED UP BECAUSE OF YOU AND YOUR LIES?!?!_

Liz sees him, and waves him over.  “Whatever you’ve got for him will have to wait,” she says, taking an envelope from a mail slot and giving it to him.  Tate turns it over. His name, in some kind of fancy script. “Mr. March is throwing a little get-together in half an hour,” Liz whispers, leaning over the desk.  “It seems you’re invited.” She winks, and turns back to her book. Tate squints at the cover. Something French-sounding.

As he heads to the elevator, he sees a handsome, dark-haired man walk in.  “Hey,” he calls to Liz.

“Hey yourself,” Liz says, and Tate turns back to get a better look at the guy.  “How many years now?”

“Five,” the man says with a charismatic smile.  “It’s good to be back.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you.  Sign in and go to twenty-seven. There’s something waiting for you, courtesy of the master.”  The man moans wordlessly and scribbles his name in the guestbook before bounding towards the stairs.  He disappears without looking at Tate, who looks after him. He thinks he’s seen that guy’s picture somewhere before.

Maybe he’s here to attend this party James is throwing, whatever it is.  The party that he’s got to get to, apparently. He’ll have to tell James about the vocal cords in his bag afterwards.  Going up to his room, he finds a suit laid out for him on the bed, with a note from Liz and Sally telling him to wear it to the dinner.  Yeah, fuck that. He’s open to a lot, but a goddamn suit is the last straw. He looks like Little Lord Fauntleroy in those things.

He looks at the time.  Twenty-five minutes till this thing.  Maybe he can find Sally in the meantime.

A shriek pierces his eardrums, and he pulls open the door, looking for the source in the hallway.  No one’s out here. It must be coming from another room, close by. Another scream.

 _“Please, you’re hurting me!”_ It sounds like a boy, his voice recently deepened.  Tate walks down the hall, stopping outside sixty-one, where the screams are loudest.   _“Stop it!  Please don’t…”_ The screams become unintelligible, and suddenly end altogether.  Tate stares at the door. What the _fuck_ is going on?

Twenty more minutes pass, listening to the occasional shriek, and he walks up to seventy-eight.  When he shuts it a man with his hair combed back neatly from his face sees him and smiles.

“You look lost,” he says.  “Need a lift home?”

“Now, Dean, what did I say about leaving my special guest alone?” James asks gently, suddenly appearing between them.  “He’s not for you.”

“Yeah, stay away from Dean,” says another voice, and Tate looks over to see the dark-haired man from earlier.  “Let him talk and you’ll end up tied down in his bed, and trust me. It’ll hurt real bad.”

“What’ll hurt real bad is if you listen to him,” Dean whispers in Tate’s ear.  “He’ll beat your head in with a rod.”

“Hey, I don’t go after guys!” the other man growls.

“Calm yourselves,” James orders icily.  “I won’t have you scaring him off!” Dean and the other guy shut their mouths immediately, and James sighs, laying a hand on Tate’s shoulder.  “I’m sorry about these two. They’re quite unruly at this time of year, I’m afraid.” The door opens, and a man in a plaid cap walks in, his hands shoved in his pockets.  “Eddie!” James cries jovially, clapping the man on the back. “Good to have you!” The man blinks, nods his thanks, and sits down at the table, looking down at the floor.

“You’re no fun,” groans Dean, leaning over his chair.  “Why are you so fucking _weird,_ man?  Like, what was up with the nipple belt and those cunts in a box?  You’re supposed to get _rid_ of the bodies.  That’s what the master told you.”

“You kept keys,” the man mumbles.

“Yeah.   _Keys._  Not fucking skulls, asshole.”

“I didn’t keep anything,” says the dark-haired man smugly.

“Oh fuck off, Ted,” Dean snaps.  “Thirty bodies, whatever. I would have gotten more than you if fucking _Wayne_ hadn’t gotten so high and mighty.  ‘I can’t have you kill all my friends’; shut the hell up.  You were very happy to participate when it was Billy and Johnny!”

“Don’t work yourself up, Dean,” James chides.  “You must save your rage for later. For now, we wait for John.  It’s his first time here.”

“No Charlie?” Eddie asks quietly, disappointed.

“Sadly, no.  Our dear Charlie has yet to join us on this side of mortality.  Perhaps he’ll have the grace to cut his own throat and join us next year,” James replies.

“Who’s that?” Ted asks, pointing to Tate, who suddenly realizes that he’s been standing the middle of room this whole time.  

“This,” James says, beckoning Tate forward, “is my newest pupil.  He’s quite the artist with a knife and revolver. Six murders he has already completed under my tutelage!”

“Seven,” Tate corrects him.  “Liz said to leave what I brought back until this is over.”

“Excellent.  Now, where’s John?  He’s late.”

“Is this right?” asks a portly man, walking into the room.  “Seventy-eight?”

“Yes, John.   _Very_ good to see you, dear man--I hope the injection wasn’t too painful?” James asks.  John shakes his head.

“Honestly?  Felt like going to sleep after getting a flu shot.”  He looks around the room. “Who’re these guys?”

“You’ll know when we sup.  Speaking of which, I think it’s high time for the meal, don’t you?”  James claps his hands, and the three other men file over the table. Tate follows.

“You sit by me,” Ted tells Tate, grabbing him and jabbing a finger into his chest.  “Dean and John like them young and pretty. If the master wasn’t here, they’d be all over you.”

“Tate will sit by me, Ted.  Let him go,” James commands, and Ted drops Tate’s arm.  Tate takes his seat and James clears his throat. “Now! We’ll have introductions.  Ed, why don’t you start?”

Ed bites his lips.  “I’m Ed Gein,” he mumbles, and Tate almost jumps out of his seat.  Ed Gein. _Ed fucking Gein?!_ It’s not that he’s dead, that Tate can handle, but he knows James?   _How?_ “I’m from Plainfield, and I like making things.  Clothes. Bowls. That kind of stuff.”

“Made of _skin and skulls!”_ Dean cackles.  “Tell ‘em about the corset, Eddie baby!”  James glares at him, and he shuts up. “Sorry.”

“Me next?” Ted asks, and James nods, while Miss Evers comes out and serves them silently.  “Theodore Bundy. Call me Ted. I confessed to thirty murders, but I don’t remember how many I did now.  I’m not like you weirdos,” he adds, gesturing to Dean and John. “I like girls. I like girls a lot. But it was the pornography, you know?  The shit they show, it just… it drives you to wanna do things.” He stops to catch his breath, and Dean starts before he can resume, talking with the remains of some food in his mouth.

“Dean Corll, the candyman of Houston.  They say it was at least twenty-eight sweet boys I got, but it was more.  David and I were unstoppable together, and when Wayne joined, it was even better.  He shot me, but it was worth it. It was all worth it for those glorious days with my boys.”

“John?” James asks.  “Will you tell us about yourself?”

“Yeah,” John says brightly.  “I’m John Wayne Gacy, I’m from Norwood Park, Illinois, and I own PDM Contractors.  Stands for ‘Painting, Decorating, and Maintenance.’ I’m handy with handcuffs and a rope, and when they found the bodies in my crawl space, it was good-bye to my business.  I was executed in May, so it’s my first night here.”

“And there shall be many more to come,” James says.  “Tate? Will you speak?”

“I…”  Tate tries to find the right words.  “I’m sorry, but… how do you _know_ these guys?”  James laughs.

“Those are quite the tales.  Would all you care to tell him?”

“I’ll start,” Ted says.  “I was in Cali in seventy-three, Republican business.  I stayed a couple nights at the Cortez; I hadn’t started for real then, I don’t think, but the master came into my room and told me he saw great potential in me.  Told me I had to be indiscriminate, kill anyone. Can’t have a pattern, he told me, otherwise they’ll find you. I took him up on that, and hey, I got a hell of a lot of fun out of it.”

“I was road-tripping after my Army discharge,” Dean says.  “Cruising the country. I stayed overnight here, and the master was in my room.  I told him about my idea for the candy company, and he said it was the perfect lure.  He asked what I wanted most in the world. I said I wanted kids at my mercy, begging me for more.  Give them the candy, he said, and they’ll be on their knees gasping for you. I did, and it was the best decision I made.”

Ed hesitates, then begins.  “It was nineteen-forty-seven.  I had been riding the buses across the country, grieving my mother.  I ended up at the Cortez, don’t know how, but I got a room and I just put my head down and cried and cried.  Then the master was there, comforting me. Saying he understood. He said I shouldn’t live out my days in grief, but that I should recreate her.  That she didn’t have to be dead. When I got back to Plainfield, I started visiting the cemetery. I wasn’t just gonna rebuild her. I was gonna _be_ her.”

“I never imagined he’d take it quite so far,” James remarks, “but Eddie is a very creative soul, and there is no repressing that.  Quite ambitious, really. A shame they caught you.”

“You made lamps of lady skin,” Dean adds.  “Like the master says. You have to _hide the bodies,_ Eddie.”

“Hush, Corll!  Your comments grow tiresome,” James snaps, and Dean shuts his mouth again.  “John, go on.”

“I was eighteen or nineteen, I don’t remember now.  I wanted to see the Pacific, and like everyone else, I stayed here a few nights.  It was cheap then, six bucks a night. The master visited me and told me how to get rid of the evidence.  I don’t know how, but he sensed it. He sensed what I wanted.” He leans his elbows on the table and looks into Tate’s eyes.  “What about you? You’ve barely said anything since we sat down.”

“Well…”  Tate hates to admit it, but he’s flustered.  These guys are all kind of amazing. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to measure up.  How is he supposed to impress the man who made lampshades out of human skin, or _Ted goddamn Bundy?_ Still, they shared, so he has to as well.  “I’m Tate Langdon, and I killed fifteen of my classmates last month.  I ran from the cops and ended up finding Mr. March here.” He doesn’t want to call James _the master,_ but first-name basis seems too informal for right now.  “He told me about his Ten Commandments murders, and he asked me to finish them.  I’m almost done with them now. One more to go.”

“He’s as famous as any of us,” James says clapping Tate on the shoulder, “for what he did to those children.  He’d outshine us all in the public eye if they knew of the other murders, but he’s too clever for that. A good deal smarter than _you,_ John,” he adds bitingly, and John flushes.

“I used lime.  How was I supposed to know they’d look in the crawl space?”

“What about Eddie?” Dean asks.  “He made bowls from fucking skulls.”

 _“Will you shut up about that?”_ Ed yells, finally losing his temper.  

“Enough!  Why do you quarrel like children when you are the Mount Rushmore of murder?  Everyone knows your names, they write books about you; film pictures of your lives!  There’s no use for your rage in pettiness, not when she will bring us our pet soon.” James finishes his short lecture as silence falls, and they go back to eating.   _She._ Tate remembers Sally talking about the deal she has with James.  Maybe this is part of it?

Sure enough, the door opens, and Sally comes in leading a pale-faced man by the hand.  “I got him on pure white,” she says, before James can ask anything. “He won’t feel a thing.”  James takes the man from her, and she leans toward him. “Another year?”

“Of course, my dear.  Thank you; you may go now,” James says, and she leaves.  James helps the man into a chair, and the man starts giggling uncontrollably.  “Perfect,” James murmurs, and makes a gesture to the others to stand and take something from a tray at his end of the table.  Tate looks over at it. Knives. Wait. Are they going to kill this guy?

Of course they are.  What the hell else would they do?

“Now John, Dean,” James is saying, “you’re not to do anything other than kill him.  You already had your fun.”

“He’s too old for me,” Dean says.  John shakes his head in agreement and pulls a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket.

“We’re gonna play a game,” he tells the man.  “You put these on, and we’ll see how fast you can get out of them.  Okay?” The man’s head lolls, and he says something unintelligible. John grins and slaps the cuffs onto the man’s wrists.  “Didn’t even have to give him anything,” he crows happily.

“Yes, you can thank Sally for her pains,” James says, taking a knife off the tray.  He passes it to Ted, who takes another, and by the time it gets to Tate, only a kitchen knife is left.  Good. He’s been enjoying using those lately. They’re better than the small knife and the gun; longer too--he can stab clean through someone’s throat and tear out their vocal cords with it.

James takes the first stab, driving his knife through the man’s cheek and out the other side of his face, and the rest join in.  Tate hangs back for a moment and watches the masters at their craft. It’s absolutely fucking beautiful, the ecstatic looks on their faces as blood pours from the man’s various wounds.

“Tate!” Ted calls.  “C’mon! You gotta take a turn too.”  Tate bends over the man. There’s not an inch of unharmed flesh on him; he might as well be made of stab wounds, save for one part.  His neck. His neck is bloodied but intact, white amongst the scarlet. He’ll have to remedy that. Drawing back his knife, he stabs the man through the throat like he did the Wilkeses, turning the knife around in there for added impact.  The man’s mouth falls open, and he stops breathing mid-chest rise. It’s amazing he even made it that far.

They settle back into their chairs, save for Ed, who raises his glass.  “A toast,” he says. “To the master.”

“To the master,” Dean, John, and Ted echo, while James sits there smiling.  Tate takes a drink, and he’s never regretted anything so much in his life. Whatever this is, it’s way too strong, and he almost passes out right then and there.

“Absinthe,” James says, leaning over to him.  “It’s an acquired taste.”

Acquired taste?  Yeah, he’ll never get used to this.  There’s no way he’s remembering the rest of the night.

And he doesn’t, because next thing he knows, he’s lying in his bed, fully clothed, James standing over him.  “I’ll take care of this,” James murmurs, and Tate realizes he’s holding the vocal cords. “You rest. The last must be your grandest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference: Ed Gein died in 1984, Ted Bundy in 1989, Dean Corll in 1973, and John Wayne Gacy in May 1994. Also: I got all my information on these men from Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure it's mostly accurate, except for the stories of how they met March. Bundy was the only one who ever was in California, I think, and obviously, March isn't real.


	9. never tasted as sweet a poison as you have; you’re an urge that can never be cured

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ten Commandments murders are finally finished.
> 
> The chapter title is from "Trust Me", from Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich's musical film "The Devil's Carnival."
> 
> Trigger warning for very, very, VERY gory murder by knife, mentions of self-harm, and sex between two people of a certain, though not illegal, age gap (Tate is eighteen, March is in his early thirties).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The age of consent in California is eighteen, and I have had Tate's eighteenth birthday pass in an earlier chapter. Hence, he is legally able to consent.  
> 2\. I must emphasize that fact that James March does not care a whit about preparation, and that, if engaging in anal sex for the first time, you should always use real lubricant and not just your own saliva.  
> 3\. There is no verbal consent here (though there is very much consent), but it is a must to ask for verbal consent in real life. Nothing but a strong, happy "yes" should be a go-ahead for sex.  
> 4\. The quote used in context of a kiss is from William Shakespeare's Othello, act V, scene II. (And has anyone else noticed than in AHS it's only the villains who quote Shakespeare and the classics? What do the writers have against the classics?)  
> 5\. Once again, a reminder that no one in this fic is to be emulated.

Excitement and desire crackles through his body, boiling his blood and churning his organs.  He’s abuzz, aflame, and raring to go. This is it. Tonight’s the night, the last sinners’ deaths.  It’s here, in the hotel, because James wants to watch. Not participate, but only watch, like he did with Jenny.  “I hope that to watch your spectacle,” he had said earlier, “will be one of the finest things I have ever seen.” Maybe a month ago, that would have been pressure, but he knew what he wanted to do the minute he found the sinners.

He’s going to tie them up and gut them throat to groin, straight down the front and let their organs spill all over the floor.  Now _that’ll_ be a spectacle.

 _Thou shalt not worship false idols._  The three friends on the ninth floor won’t shut the fuck up about how much they love Bob Dylan; they’re in town for his concert, according to their blathering in the bar.  Surprise-surprise, they’re not gonna make it, the poor souls. Tate surveys at the supplies spread out on his bed: three thick ropes and the longest, sharpest knife he could find in the kitchen.  Sally stands beside him, looking them over too. She grins.

“I can’t wait to hear their screams.  That’s the best part.”

“Yeah.”  Tate grins back at her.  “It is.” It all is--the screams, the wails, the terror in their eyes, the tears; it all melts together in a sweet cacophony of fear and powerlessness and helpless rage.  Hearing someone sob and beg for your mercy is fucking intoxicating, a thousand times better than any drug, and, no exaggeration, it’s a turn-on. It’s the power he has, the knowledge that they’ll do anything for him to stay alive, and he could make them do all sorts of disgusting things and still kill them.  He’d love to do that one day, but not tonight. Tonight he’s going to be straightforward with it.

Tate looks at the clock.  Ten-twenty-five. He’s supposed be up there at half past ten.  “I gotta go,” he tells Sally, filling his bag with the rope and knife, since there’s not enough room in his clothes.  She squeezes his hand, her silent way of telling him good luck, and disappears before he leaves. She’ll be waiting for him after, he knows.  She likes to hear about it as much as James does.

Tate gets up to ninety-eight and knocks.  One of the friends, a man about fifty, answers, and he pushes past him into the room, slams him into the wall, and ties him to the knob before he can scream.  The other two men, one bald and one black-haired, gape at him in terror. The bald one runs for the phone, but Tate catches him by the arm and ties him to the wardrobe, looping the rope around the knobs.  He wishes he could hang them from the ceiling, but there aren’t any rafters, so the doors do well enough. The last friend backs away towards the window, as if falling nine stories will make him any safer, and Tate grabs his knife and points it at him before jerking his head towards the bathroom door.  Like Iago, he’ll say nothing. To be silent and motiveless is the most terrifying thing of all; to not know why someone is doing this to you, because it could be any little thing you’ve done. All the stupid shit you’ve said and done comes back to you, and you’re crushed with confusion and guilt as you die.  It’s a terrible way to go, and these three deserve that and far worse.

The black-haired man inches towards the bathroom door, sobbing loudly.  When he reaches it, Tate ties him to the knob and walks back over to the man at the exit door, seeing James standing by the window as he does.  James says nothing, only smiles, and Tate presses the knife’s point into the man’s trembling throat.

“Please,” the man cries.  “Please, don’t--”. Tate claps a hand over his mouth and slices his throat down the middle, down through the chest and stomach all the way to his groin, hot blood spurting red and wet all over his hands.  The man screams, still breathing, and Tate reaches inside his ribcage and tears his heart free, feeling it beat its last in his fingers. He grins at the man before making his way over to the bald man at the wardrobe and twisting the knife deep enough to cut his throat clean in half.  The man tries to scream, but his vocal cords have been sliced; a pitiful choking sound emerges, and it dies away as Tate sinks to his knees, stopping the knife at the groin like before. What now? Not the heart again. Something bigger. He peers inside the man, looking past the ribs and stomach to where the wound ends.  The intestines. Perfect. They come away in his hands long and bloody, and Tate realize that it’s gone. The sickness he once felt at cutting bodies apart--it’s gone. Organs spilled all over the floor, the bodies bleeding dark rivers down the doors, faces frozen in eternal fear and pain; _that’s_ what’s fucking beautiful.  He’s not drowning in the blood anymore.  He’s bathing in it.

The black-haired man tied to the bathroom door screams over and over, long and drawn-out, howling for help.  Poor stupid thing. There’s no one to help him, not in this hotel and not in all of Los Angeles, not as long as Tate lives.  Tate studies him for a minute, wondering if he should just go and do the same thing before changing his mind. He’ll switch it up.  Lifting up the man’s shirt, he shoves the knife in at his groin and pushes it upwards, through the stomach, chest, and throat, but there’s no way he’s stopping at the throat.  This guy was singing “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” as loudly as he could yesterday, and for that he gets something extra. Angling the blade carefully, Tate slashes up the middle of the man’s face, stopping just short of skull’s crown.  Stepping back, he tilts his head, looking his work up and down. It’s as if the man was held together by a zipper that’s been ripped right off his skin. Tate searches the gaping wound for anything to take, and he comes up with the stomach and the liver.  Not as flashy as the intestines or the heart, so two do the trick.

He’s putting the removed organs on the dresser to take down later when he’s suddenly turned around and thrown into the wall.  James is there, his eyes bright, feverish, and wild, staring straight into the depths of Tate’s soul, if he still has one. Tate meets his gaze, dark eyes fastened on dark eyes, and before he finishes thinking of it, he’s grabbing James’s face and kissing him, ignoring the blood that’s spattered all over his mouth.  James’s fingers thread through Tate’s hair and yank, hard, and Tate hisses in pain, momentarily breaking away. James’s mouth is smeared with blood, his hair is fallen out of place, and he has that look in his eyes again. The drunk-on-bloodshed look. The look Tate’s come to want, in that moment, more than anything.  He goes in for another kiss, but James all but flings him backwards into the bed, and Tate laughs, because he never expected to love that. Being thrown around like a ragdoll--that’s what gets him going, he guesses. Could be worse.

Taking off his clothes, Tate finds that the blood has soaked right through them, but James doesn’t mind.  Tearing his shirt off (but not his undershirt, Tate notices), he climbs on top of Tate, grabbing him by the hair for another kiss. It lasts for so long that Tate wonders if James is trying to stop his breathing, and he wouldn’t mind it.  If James ‘kissed him ere he killed him’, Tate would be dying at the happiest moment of his life. All those times the darkness has crushed him, choked him, forced him to draw a blade across his flesh, and now he’s in its arms, feeling its lips on his.

Because James is the darkness.  He’s the darkness come to life, turned from tormentor to friend to lover, and Tate wants to live there forever, to be completely consumed by it, to let it tear him apart and leave him bleeding on the ground.  

A sucking sound jerks him out of his head, and he sees James sliding two fingers out his mouth.  The fingers move lower and oh _FUCK._ Tate grits his teeth.  He’s pretty sure it’s supposed to hurt a little, but not like this.  James withdraws his fingers and unbuckles his belt, catching Tate’s gaze as he leans back down, and Tate nods his consent.  He’s ready. If he wants the darkness, he has to take it all in, every bit of pain and pleasure that it will give him. Exhaling, he jerks James down by the neck, kissing him again, refusing to make a sound even when it hurts so much he thinks something might tear.  

James starts to move inside him, rough enough to make the bed rattle, and Tate decides to try something.  Lying here isn’t doing it for him. Bracing himself, he wraps his legs around James’s waist, pushes himself up on his elbows, and flips them both over so he’s sitting astride James.  James’s eyebrows rise in surprise, but he smiles when Tate starts to ride him, digging his fingers into Tate’s hips hard enough to leave bruises. Tate laughs again as the pain starts to fade, looking down at him, and this time it’s for joy; sheer joy, that he’s finally found the one who can truly love him, all of him, even the parts that everyone else he’s ever known has hated and feared.  

Fresh blood streams from where James’s nails cut his flesh and orgasm jolts through him, sudden and almost brutal, tearing a yell from his throat.  James stiffens underneath him and finishes with a hiss, and Tate rolls off of him, lying on the blood-stained sheets, his mind hazy. He wants to sleep now, curl up somewhere without light and sleep for a long time.

“Sweetling,” James whispers, his mouth against the back of Tate’s neck.  “You’ve made me happier than I’ve been in many years.” Tate barely nods, closing his eyes and letting James pull him close.  His cold arms are more comforting than any warm embrace in the world. As the world around him falls away, one last realization crosses his mind, clear and sharp amongst the cloudiness.

The darkness.  It has him.


	10. what a pretty yet dangerous line, my love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tate runs into Elizabeth again, and this time, she's not going to let him slip by.
> 
> The chapter title is from "Prick! Goes the Scorpion's Tale", from Darren Lynn Bousman and Terrance Zdunich's musical film "The Devil's Carnival."
> 
> Trigger warning for physical harm and mention of sex between two people of a wide though not illegal age gap, as well as being so deep into a toxic relationship that you can't see the toxicity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Finals are coming up for me, so this a short filler chapter mostly here to set up Tate and Elizabeth's relationship. I really want to focus on Tate's relationships with the women of the hotel in future chapters; given his need to please the women of the house in the first season, I thought it could be interesting to write about.  
> 2\. Once again, I do not condone anything that happens in this fic. Seriously, don't do anything these people do.

_ The moment he opened the door, she slapped him across the face, hard enough to knock him backwards.  “What did I do to displease you now? It’s quite vexing how I can’t win with you.” _

_ “You perverted animal,” she snarled.  “You slept with him. What did you do, to make him?” _

_ “I didn’t ‘make him’, darling, he very much wanted to.  And you’ve enjoyed my bed as well, so don’t point fingers.” _

_ “I’m not blaming him.  I’m blaming you. You’ve ruined him.  He’ll be miserable for the rest of his days, when the guilt catches up to him.” _

_ “Oh, love.”  James shook his head.  “He doesn’t feel guilt.” _

_ “He does,” Elizabeth said, her eyes burning with rage.  “I can see it in his eyes. He’s a child, James. He feels too much; he’s not like you.  He’ll find someone he wants to be with, someone he truly loves,  _ not you, _ and when they find out, he’ll feel remorse.  You’ve set him up for a life of self-hatred.” She shook her head back at him.  “You’ve never understood it. How others can feel pain, when you don’t--” _

_ “Do not think that I don’t feel pain!” James roared, grabbing her by the back of her neck.  “You! You have been my sole comfort in this rotting graveyard, and yet you grow more and more disdainful with every month.  What is it? What did I ever do to hurt you? I saved you!” _

_ Elizabeth tore herself out his grasp.  “I didn’t want to be saved! Letting me fall would have been a mercy.  You kept me alive without him, and when I found him again, you took him away--I don’t know what you did, but I know it was you.  You tortured me for years. I’m only returning the favor now.” She shook her head at him. “Why now? I know you still love me. What made you want him?” _

_ “Frankly, my dear,” James said, recovering his composure, “he excites me.  I’ve never met another so eager and quick, and he’s quite the artist. To be truthful, he initiated it.  I saw no reason not to give him what he wanted, not after all he’s done for me. Have you ever stopped to think,” he asked, “that we are more alike than you suspect?  That I have the same simple desires as you do? Death does not stop one from loving, or lusting.” _

_ “I don’t think you even want him for himself,” Elizabeth said.  “You want him because you molded him in your image. He’s just another version of you in your eyes.”  She laughed sadly. “I’m not surprised. You’ve always been a narcissist, James.” _

_ “And you are not?  What of those hapless boys you turn to blood and lust?  Do you not make them slaves to your pleasure? If I am a narcissist, you are too.” _

_ “I’m going to find him,” Elizabeth snarls, “and I’m going to talk to him.  I’ll tell him what you did to me, who you’re responsible for--my god, Jimmy, Sharon Tate!  If you hadn’t put ideas in that man’s head, she might still be alive today. Those boys Gacy and Corll raped and murdered.  Every woman Bundy took. Something you’ve done will disgust him. He still has a living heart. Yours is stone.” _

_ James laughed.  “You think he will be shocked?  Darling, he’s met with them. They are his kind.  And as for Charlie, I am sure he will find in him a good friend.  Try if you wish, but I have no doubt that whatever you tell him, he will only love me more for it.  But do as you say you will. It will give me pleasure to see you fail.” Elizabeth’s eyes widened slightly, and James nodded.  “Do you think because I love you that I have never harbored some anger towards you? I’m only human.” _

_ Elizabeth stormed out without another word, slamming the door behind her.  James sighed. Perhaps his father, awful though he was, had been right. Always marry a homely woman. _

***

Tate doesn’t sleep much the next few nights.  He didn’t sleep in that house either, but that was because of Addie crying in the next room over, or his mother crying in the kitchen, or the spirits whispering in the halls.  Those were nights with the blankets over his head trying to block out all the pain that screamed around him. Now he doesn’t sleep because when the sun goes down, James is in his room, or he goes up to seventy-eight. 

It feels good to be wanted.  No. It’s everything to be wanted, to be loved, to be needed.  He never knew how much he needed that until now. No one’s wanted him before, not all of him.  Only the parts they thought they could mold to their expectations. But James? James doesn’t care.  He loves it all, every thought the therapists said was harmful, every impulse so violent that it scared Tate himself.  Nothing with James is too much, nothing is wrong; everything is welcome. Tate isn’t afraid of losing love anymore, of having no one.  Even if everyone he’s ever known leaves him, James will still be at his side. Tate’s sure of that.

Night’s only half the time, though, and, since James likes to make himself scarce during the day, Tate’s taken to hanging around Liz’s bar.  She still won’t sell him anything alcoholic, but Sally’s usually there, and guests come down regularly for drinks so there’s always something going on.  The stories people tell when they get a couple drinks are fascinating and miserable, and more importantly, Tate’s discovered something.

Screwing with guests is really fucking  _ fun.   _

He hasn’t been in the mood for murder lately, what with committing so much of it in the past weeks, but fucking with their pathetic minds is a fantastic substitute.  And Sally’s an expert at it. Every idea she comes up with is better and more twisted than the last.

There’s a businessman at the bar already this morning, looking exhausted.  Probably already had three meetings or something. Perfect. Tate slides in beside him.  “Hi,” he says. “You have a minute?” The man blinks tiredly at him, and Tate takes it as a yes.  “I need help,” he says. “There’s this guy I know. Really great. He’s in prison and he shouldn’t be.  Know any lawyers I could call?”

“No,” the man mumbles.  “Sorry.”

“No one?  Charlie will be so disappointed,” Sally says, sitting down on the man’s other side.  “He’s been in there too long.”

“Charlie?” mutters the man, rubbing at one of his eyes.

“Yeah.  Charlie Manson.  The son of God isn’t supposed to be locked up,” Tate says, and suppresses a grin watching the man’s eyes shoot wide open.  “Please, sir, you have to help us. He can only get by so long on our conjugal visits, you know.” 

“Excuse me,” the man says, standing and all but running to the elevator.  Sally snorts and buries her face in Tate’s shoulder, and he slips his hand into hers.  

“I love you,” he says, and means it.  He can let go with her too, but it’s different than it is with James.  With Sally he can be, well…  _ ridiculous.   _ And sometimes he likes being ridiculous and fucking around.  It’s a reprieve, a reminder that people aren’t just good for nothing and here to kill.  They’re good for messing with too.

“I love you too,” Sally smiles, passing him a cigarette.  Tate still has no idea where the hell she gets them, but he’s grateful.  Now that the murders are done, he’s been sticking to the hotel. They might be looking for him in Massachusetts, but they could always decide to do one last sweep of the city.  Best to lie low, especially since the bodies he left have been found.

“Pardon me,” says a voice above them, “but I want to talk.”  They look up, and it’s the blonde lady he saw weeks ago. He knows who she is now.  James’s wife. Is he supposed to be jealous? Does she even think they’re still married, since James is dead?  Sally nods and leaves, walking out of the bar before Tate can say anything. The woman sits down across from him and offers her hand.  “I’m Elizabeth,” she says. 

“Tate.”  He takes her hand and shakes it.  It’s freezing. James said she wasn’t dead, so what is she?  He’s sure that no one alive can be this cold.

“I imagine he told me about you,” she says.  “My… husband. He likes to call me Mrs. March, but I’m a widow, legally.  And I don’t love him, so you don’t have to be jealous that I’ll take him from you, if that’s what you’re worried about.  He loves me, though--that’s what I came to tell you about. I hate to be blunt, but you need to leave this place. Now, before he traps you here like he did me.”

“I thought you were alive.  Wait.  _ How  _ are you alive?”

“I am, and I’ll explain.  But I own this hotel; it passed to me when he died.  And with its history, it’s impossible to sell. I’ve been running this place since the thirties--and about that.  Did he tell you about Rudy?” 

“Rudolph Valentino?”

“Yes.”  Elizabeth’s eyes are wet, and she blinks hard and wipes them.  “I know this sounds insane, but he… he turned me. I have to drink blood if I want to keep living.”

“You’re a vampire.”  You know what? This isn’t a surprise.  Tate’s been expecting this. He’s already having sex with a ghost; vampires are nothing next to that.  The next thing someone will tell him is that there’s a coven of witches, and they stay at the hotel once a year.

“Afflicted is the proper name, but I suppose the public would call us vampires.  But yes, Rudy turned me. We were lovers, he and I, and I thought he left me when he died.  It’s why I married James--I thought I might as well live in splendor if I was never going to be happy again.  Then Rudy showed up and told me he was alive, that he had been turned and faked his own death. He wanted to run away together, and I agreed, but he never showed up to the train.  I’m convinced James did something to him. He’s the jealous one.” Elizabeth sighs. “You’re young. You’re pretty. You still have a shot at life. I can get you a train or bus ticket out of here; even a plane ride, if that’s what you need.  Go somewhere people don’t know what you did, change your name, and don’t come back. You have to leave before he entraps you, or even if he already has.”

This bullshit again.  Why the fuck does everyone think he and James are the worst thing to happen since Van Halen?  Tate could scream at her for saying these things, but he decides to investigate. “What will he do to me, or what’s he already done to me that makes you think I need to leave?”

“He’s corrupted you.  He’s made you think that there’s no one worthy of living except for you; given you some kind of god complex.  You’re going to find out that’s not true the minute you fall in love with someone who’s not him, and you will.  Young hearts wander. But he won’t let you love them. He’ll take them and hurt them, and keep you. He might even kill you to keep you.  Do you really want to stay here for eternity?”

Is that even a question?  This is his home now. This is where the only people who understand him are.  There’s nowhere else to go, and he likes it that way. “Yeah. I mean, if I died here, I’d be happy.  I don’t wanna leave.”

Elizabeth sighs again.  “It’s the darkness in him that you’re drawn to.  I was too. But you have to understand, it’s not just darkness in him, it’s evil.  Pure evil, more than even you can comprehend. And you love him, don’t you?” Tate nods.  “He loves you because you’re like him now. He loves you because he thinks he made you; as an extension of himself.  It’s why he loves me; he looks at what I’ve become, what I do to survive, and he sees himself in it. Don’t you see? He can’t love, not in any real way.  Not in a way that’s good for you.”

“You’re wrong,” Tate says, crossing his arms.  “He didn’t make me. He helped me. I was already like that when I got here; I shot up a school, for fuck’s sake!  No one else’s ever loved me for what I am, only him. I’m not running away from my one shot at real happiness.”

Elizabeth shakes her head.  “He’s got you already,” she says.  “I’m not giving up on you, though. You need someone other than him.  I’ll see you around.” She sounds so sure of herself that it irritates him; what does she know about him?  He won’t break as easily as she did. What he has with James is a relationship of equals, two people working with each other to better the world.  She never tried to rise to James’s level.

Elizabeth leaves him sitting there, and Sally reappears a moment later.  “What’d she want?”

“She wants me to get out,” Tate says.  “And I think she’s gonna try to be a good influence on me, or whatever.  Why is everyone here trying to parent me?”

“They think you have some good left in you,” Sally says, “and they’re wrong.”  She laughs. “You’re as bad as I am. Freeing, isn’t it? Giving up on everyone’s perceptions of you and fucking them up for underestimating you?”

“Yeah.”  Tate grins.  “It is.” He looks over, and sees a nervous-looking young woman at the bar.  “Ask her about Charlie?”

“Fuck yes,” Sally says, and they walk over to her, eager as ever to repeat their game.


End file.
